Review: QUARTET IN AUTUMN, Arcola Theatre

Photo credit: Manuel Harlan

Barbara Pym’s 1977 novel might not seem a likely choice as the latest production at the Arcola Theatre, but it is presented with great care and insight, and more than earns its place on this stage. It’s a story of four office workers approaching retirement, and we learn much about them as individuals and in particular about the position of women all those years ago.

Edwin and Norman are not far off retiring, but it is their female colleagues Letty and Marcia who are leaving first. We meet them in the first act while all four are still at work, playing out their familiar routines and repeating the same conversations that have characterised their relationship for so long. Edwin is in thrall to his priest and lives his life in the shadow of the church. Norman is less settled, living in a bedsit and with, it seems, a relationship of sorts with Marcia, herself a keeper of secrets. The fourth member of the quartet is Letty, uncertain and hesitant but more open than the others to the world around her.

In his introduction to the book, Alexander McCall Smith calls Pym the “Jane Austen of our times” who writes about “middle-aged spinsters, clergymen and minor officials.” Even the word spinster summons up the world of fifty years ago, when marriage was assumed to be the universal aim – as in Austen’s world. All four characters are on their own, and their tentative attempts at socializing at work or outside it are uncomfortable and unsuccessful. Life, it seems, has passed them by, and only a bleak retirement awaits them; although surprises are still to be revealed.

It’s a depressing set-up but it is the particular strength of Pym’s writing that so much humour is brought into play, lightening the overall effect. The dramatisation is by Samantha Harvey, who has focused in on the quartet; and her adaptation is, as McCall Smith says of the book, “exquisitely crafted and utterly haunting.” Dominic Dromgoole’s production makes good use of the thrust stage in Studio 1, and the comings and goings of the characters hint at their individual journeys back to their lonely homes each day. Ellie Wintour’s clever set is orderly and routine, and yet infused with a deep claret red, while her costume designs summon up most effectively the drabness of the period.

Anthony Calf is Anglo-Catholic Edwin, head in the clouds and anxiously searching for approval from his priest. His occasional singing hints at his other life outside the office. Paul Rider as Norman is dismissive of his home life, and harbours an apparently unrequited attraction for Marcia, who only reluctantly accepts the coffee he makes just for her. Both actors totally inhabit their roles, to the extent that it is easy to imagine Norman’s bedsit or Edwin’s priest, even though we never see them.

Both women give performances of careful detail and appropriate understatement. As Letty, Kate Duchêne is alternately bewildered and determined, unable to understand how she has ended up in her current position but determined to take the next opportunity that comes along. As ailing Marcia, Pooky Quesnel manages to present the humour of her character’s obsessions with milk bottles as well as hinting at the mental disturbance that underpins her physical illness. It’s a complex and minutely observed performance in what is a feast of naturalistic acting by all four players.

Quartet in Autumn is an elegiac swansong for a lost age, presented here by a top-notch cast in an assured and moving production.

**** Four stars

Reviewed by: Chris Abbott

Quartet in Autumn plays at London’s Arcola Theatre until 20 June, with further info here.