Star of stage and
screen Clive Francis offers an insight
into his pivotal role in 84 Charing
Cross Road coming to
Darlington Hippodrome from Wednesday 23 May.
This will now be my
third voyage down Charing Cross Road to mix with the worthy inhabitants at
number 84; only this time with fresh eye on the production. James Roose Evans,
who not only cleverly adapted the letters in the first place, but has directed
practically every major production in this country and Broadway since the plays
birth in 1981, has now relinquished the reins to director Richard Beecham, who
has brilliantly assembled a cast of actor musicians making up the staff of the
shop, so that the evening is cleverly punctuated with music and song.
84 Charing Cross Road
is a love story between two people who never, in the twenty years of
corresponding with each other, actually ever meet. It is a quietly joyful,
meditative portrait between the New York screenwriter Helene Hanff and the London
based bookseller Frank Doel, a correspondence that touches them both
profoundly.
Frank Doel is a
fascinating character and being a book collector myself (my interest being 20th
century English first editions), someone I would love to have met. His knowledge
and passion for book collecting is clearly illustrated by the reverential
respect shown to him by the owners of every London based bookshop; all of whom
turned out in force to attend his funeral in1968. Doel was meticulous to a
fault, and when he wasn’t racing around the country buying up books to
replenish the stock of Marks and Co, he made it his job to know and compare
prices of anything of interest that might be on offer in those of his rival
shops too. An extremely private man and very protective of his family he
nevertheless strikes up an extraordinary plutonic friendship with Helene Hanff;
a friendship that’s never fully realised. It begins quite formally between
bookseller and customer, he referring to her as ‘Madame’ and she to him as
‘Sir.’ By the end all formality is dropped and a deep loving understanding
between them grows. The letters also gives the audience an insight into a
particular kind of English civility that has in effect sadly passed away.
As actors the
difficulty for both myself and Stefanie Powers is that we have to conduct this
relationship without ever once being unable to look at each other; a difficult
exercise, and yet at the same time, thanks to the brilliant way that the
letters have been edited and adapted for the stage, rewarding. People tend to
think of 84 Charing Cross Road is a two hander. This is not strictly true as we
get to know and delve into the lives of each member of staff as well, who in
turn all become as close to Helene Hanff as Frank Doyle eventually does. It is
an evening full of nostalgia and fun and I would like to think timeless.
84 Charing Cross Road runs
at Darlington Hippodrome from Wednesday 23 to Saturday 26 May.
