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Based on the novel by Barbara Pym,
Adapted by Samantha Harvey
Director: Dominic Dromgoole
Cast: Pooky Quesnel, Kate Duchene, Anthony Calf, Paul Rider
Dates of run: until June 20
Running time: Two hours, 15 minutes, including interval
Lonely, unloved women are the protagonists of Barbara Pym’s novels. The brave honesty of her subject matter led some publishers to reject her, although the poet Philip Larkin was famously among her advocates.
With justification, he placed her in the same literary tradition as Jane Austen. They share wit and penetrating social observation. The biggest difference is that in Pym, the impoverished characters are central, not minor roles, and the romantically fulfilled and financially secure are somewhere in the wings.
Now Booker Prize-winning novelist Samantha Harvey, with her stage version of Pym’s “Quartet in Autumn”, itself shortlisted for the Booker, has demonstrated that Pym, just like Austen, is rich material for dramatic adaptation.
Her penultimate novel, “Quartet in Autumn” adds extra layers of bleakness to her concerns of isolation. Of the two women in the quartet, one hoped love would just happen to her, but it never did. The other has had a mastectomy and is fixated with her surgeon. To make matters worse they have just reached retirement age and, even if their jobs were meaningless, they had given structure to days that now promise only emptiness.
Their two male colleagues, who carry on working, missing them in a vague sort of way, are hardly more fulfilled and yet, under Dominic Dromgoole’s precise and sensitive direction, the flow of sympathy is towards the women.
The skill of Pym and of this adaptation is to deliver cohesion and maintain gentle momentum when the quartet is held together, not by harmony or personal chemistry, but just the quiet rhythm of shared routine.
Set designer Ellie Wintour’s retro office plan gives physical expression to the stubborn divisions between the four with its heavy wooden desks separated by panels over which boiled sweets are passed and instant coffee is shared.
Particularly in the first half, the show has a sitcom feel as years of collegial coexistence breed the comedy of unselfconscious idiosyncrasy.
Paul Rider as Norman limbers up and shouts at the traffic and Anthony Calf as Edwin bursts into hymns as he turns to religion to fill the gap left by his late wife.
In a script packed with unforced humour, Letty (Kate Duchene) has some of the best lines. While her friend Marjorie, present only in letters folded in her disproportionately small handbag, had an expectation she would be loved, just like an Austen heroine, and that gusts of wind would blow in favourable change, Letty claims to have lived “a windless existence”.
For all her self-deprecation, her observations are astute interventions in the awkward conversations between the four individuals somehow unable to bond.
Her warmth and humanity provide a counterpoint to Marcia (Pooky Quesnel) who is odd to the extent of self-destruction.
But if Marcia is more extreme, both wrestle with pent-up emotion expressed only through clinched fists, stifled tears and occasional overly emphatic remarks.
Theirs was the lot of many of the women in the times Pym depicts when the hardships of World War Two were vivid and the liberation of the sixties had yet to happen.
Progress since has been more apparent than real. The inflation people cannot control, the whims of their landlords and the unknowableness of colleagues with whom they spend much of their lives have lost none of their relevance. The consolation now as then is that most of us find we have some personal agency after all.
Quartet in Autumn
Based on the novel by Barbara Pym,
Adapted by Samantha Harvey
Director: Dominic Dromgoole
Cast: Pooky Quesnel, Kate Duchene, Anthony Calf, Paul Rider
Dates of run: until June 20
Running time: Two hours, 15 minutes, including interval
Lonely, unloved women are the protagonists of Barbara Pym’s novels. The brave honesty of her subject matter led some publishers to reject her, although the poet Philip Larkin was famously among her advocates.
With justification, he placed her in the same literary tradition as Jane Austen. They share wit and penetrating social observation. The biggest difference is that in Pym, the impoverished characters are central, not minor roles, and the romantically fulfilled and financially secure are somewhere in the wings.
Now Booker Prize-winning novelist Samantha Harvey, with her stage version of Pym’s “Quartet in Autumn”, itself shortlisted for the Booker, has demonstrated that Pym, just like Austen, is rich material for dramatic adaptation.
Her penultimate novel, “Quartet in Autumn” adds extra layers of bleakness to her concerns of isolation. Of the two women in the quartet, one hoped love would just happen to her, but it never did. The other has had a mastectomy and is fixated with her surgeon. To make matters worse they have just reached retirement age and, even if their jobs were meaningless, they had given structure to days that now promise only emptiness.
Their two male colleagues, who carry on working, missing them in a vague sort of way, are hardly more fulfilled and yet, under Dominic Dromgoole’s precise and sensitive direction, the flow of sympathy is towards the women.
The skill of Pym and of this adaptation is to deliver cohesion and maintain gentle momentum when the quartet is held together, not by harmony or personal chemistry, but just the quiet rhythm of shared routine.
Set designer Ellie Wintour’s retro office plan gives physical expression to the stubborn divisions between the four with its heavy wooden desks separated by panels over which boiled sweets are passed and instant coffee is shared.
Particularly in the first half, the show has a sitcom feel as years of collegial coexistence breed the comedy of unselfconscious idiosyncrasy.
Paul Rider as Norman limbers up and shouts at the traffic and Anthony Calf as Edwin bursts into hymns as he turns to religion to fill the gap left by his late wife.
In a script packed with unforced humour, Letty (Kate Duchene) has some of the best lines. While her friend Marjorie, present only in letters folded in her disproportionately small handbag, had an expectation she would be loved, just like an Austen heroine, and that gusts of wind would blow in favourable change, Letty claims to have lived “a windless existence”.
For all her self-deprecation, her observations are astute interventions in the awkward conversations between the four individuals somehow unable to bond.
Her warmth and humanity provide a counterpoint to Marcia (Pooky Quesnel) who is odd to the extent of self-destruction.
But if Marcia is more extreme, both wrestle with pent-up emotion expressed only through clinched fists, stifled tears and occasional overly emphatic remarks.
Theirs was the lot of many of the women in the times Pym depicts when the hardships of World War Two were vivid and the liberation of the sixties had yet to happen.
Progress since has been more apparent than real. The inflation people cannot control, the whims of their landlords and the unknowableness of colleagues with whom they spend much of their lives have lost none of their relevance. The consolation now as then is that most of us find we have some personal agency after all.
Barbara Lewis © 2026.
By Stephen McGrath • added recently on London Grip, books, fiction, plays, theatre • Tags: Barbara Lewis, books, fiction, plays, theatre