84 CHARING CROSS ROAD
84 CHARING CROSS ROAD, Ensemble Theatre, 7 May - 3 June 2026. Photography by Prudence Upton: above - tinned ham; below - Blazey Best; below: Erik Thomson and Best
Unusually, this play was adapted from New Yorker Helene Hanff’s slim bestseller by an English theatre director, James Roose-Evans. Her epistolary memoir of two decades corresponding with a London bookshop manager had a successful West End run in 1981, and went on to Broadway, where, despite Ellen Burstyn, it lasted just three months. Fifty years on, and it’s still clear why it grabbed so many and was lost on others.
After a somewhat sluggish first night start, this production, directed deftly by Mark Kilmurry, gets going, driven with snarky charm by Blazey Best as the impoverished, scrappy New York scriptwriter. She spotted an ad in the New York Times Saturday Review of Literature (nowadays merely Book Review) and wrote to Marks & Co, 84 Charing Cross Road:
“The phrase ‘antiquarian booksellers’ scares me somewhat, as I equate ‘antique’ with expensive. I am a poor writer with an antiquarian taste in books, and all the things I want are impossible to get over here except in very expensive rare editions…”
That pretty much sums up the plot! Her letter is answered by an upright gent, manager Frank Doel (Erik Thomson). Over time and the trans-Atlantic traffic of letters and many book packages, his stiff upper politeness thaws from honorifics to first names. He’s never able to persuade her to send postal orders, however, and to watch Hanff stuffing dollar bills into envelopes is to know the world has changed.
Different times too, as she sends the staff a Christmas hamper (via Denmark) to brighten their still-post-war rationed lives: a tinned ham is the star item (see pic), eggs are much appreciated, while each staff member clutches a small individual tin of deliciousness.
What is not heard in the letters – some handwritten, some typed, all dispatched in stamped envelopes – is sentimentality. Hanff is too acerbic and humorous, and the humanity that emerges is poignant. The stage is bathed in the warmth of Matt Cox’s 1940s lighting, which brings Nick Fry’s bookshop alive. You can sniff the pleasure of paper, leather binding, cloth covers, and endless books. Tucked at the back is a low platform and Helene’s apartment: a desk, a bookshelf, a portable typewriter, a viewless window.
The friends’ physical closeness in this setting heightens the pathos of her dreaming of London and England, and the eternally thwarted plans for a visit. Also, the affection between the spiky New Yorker and the little bunch of English primroses. The constant flow of literary treasures and commentary from both sides richly colours what might otherwise have been a bloodless couple of hours.
Helene’s interests are not ordinary: John Donne, Catullus, specific editions of the Bible, editions of virtually anything unobtainable. A recipe for Yorkshire Pudding is sent; Helene relates a culinary triumph. Years pass, the shop is unchanging as Carnaby Street happens, tourists flood London, and Frank admits to quite liking “the Beatles”.
The second half of 84 Charing Cross Road is evidence of why one would program it now, especially with an actor of Blazey’s Best’s calibre to focus and energise it. In truth, it’s really a two-hander with Erik Thomson as the foil, looking thoughtful and being proper, while Katie Fitchett and Angela Mahlatjie mix concerned eyebrows with taking dictation or making tea. Brian Meegan mostly moves a ladder and books.
Invisible attributes are Madeleine Picard’s almost melancholy incidental music and Linda Nicholls-Gidley’s spot-on dialect coaching. The between-show work of stage manager Lauren Tulloh and assistant Bella Wellstead deserves mention: not only must they retrieve and relocate dozens of books, but the correct volume must be placed on the correct shelf, stack, trolley and pile; letters, envelopes and furniture too!
First editions aside, 84 Charing Cross Road is a rare and charming entertainment: human relationships across time and an ocean; warmer and more real than commonly found in our digital age of “instant” communication.
