Quartet in Autumn at Arcola Theatre: A Superb Adaptation of Barbara Pym's Novel

Quartet in Autumn at Arcola Theatre: A Superb Adaptation

Booker Prize-winning author Samantha Harvey has delivered a sensitive and outstanding adaptation of Barbara Pym's classic late novel Quartet in Autumn, now playing at the Arcola Theatre in Dalston. Directed by Dominic Dromgoole, this production captures the subtle, cutting rhythms of Pym's prose with remarkable fidelity.

Since Philip Larkin called Barbara Pym the 'most underrated writer of the twentieth century', a quiet cult of appreciation has grown around her novels. She is known for her wry chronicling of understated lives: clergymen and spinsters, or here, four ageing co-workers facing a precarious retirement. Pym is a writer's writer, so it is a delight to find her work adapted so sensitively for the stage by Harvey, a Booker Prize-winning author in her own right, and directed by Dromgoole, himself a very good writer. The production is completely attuned to the source material.

Harvey does an outstanding job of dramatising a novel in which little happens and even less is said. The indirect music of Pym's narrative voice, which drifts in and out of the thoughts of Edwin, Letty, Norman, and Marcia, is transposed beautifully into argument and dialogue, creating memorable parts for four very good actors. The comedy lies in the sharp observation of apparently trivial details: the way that uptight Marcia and bantering Norman tussle over their 'family-sized tin of coffee', a shared resource from which sweet-natured Letty and church-going Edwin, being tea drinkers, are excluded. The tragedy is that the four ageing singletons have worked together for years, do not really have anybody else, but cannot quite connect. They strive for human sympathy; there are frequent near-misses. When the women retire, they struggle to keep in touch.

—

Wide Pickt banner — collaborative shopping lists app for Telegram, phone mockup with grocery list

This intimate staging in the round brilliantly centralises their not-quite-relationship to each other through a square mid-century desk, partitioned into quarters, with the four office workers seated not face-to-face but at right angles to each other. Paul Rider's Norman takes the mickey, and Pooky Quesnel's Marcia, despite her increasingly embittered oddness, seems perked up by his cheeky aggressions. Anthony Calf's Edwin is a ghostly widower, trying, not terribly hard, to do the right thing and recruit the others to the church. Kate Duchene brings a lovely depth, wit, and sympathy to Letty, who, despite the privations of her boarding house existence and a clear-eyed moral view of those around her, has not given up on friendship or love.

They are all very funny, but the production never reduces them to figures of fun. The humour is shared; it is a survival strategy. The pleasure is in the insight and observation. 'Loneliness clarifies', wrote Larkin. It could be the tag line for Quartet in Autumn, and for most of Pym's work. But this staging avoids wallowing in sourness or sadness, instead finding ways of bringing that insight to life dramatically. The inspired comic business at a funeral, where none of them wants to hold the wreath and they pass it between each other, is a highlight. There is also a memorable and beautifully staged scene in which we hear snippets of the characters' interior monologues, a four-part harmony of the inner voices which they cannot share with each other. It all feels very funny and very sad and very true to the understated tragicomedy of Pym's vision.

Details