London Theatre News & Reviews

The Reviews are in for Quartet in Autumn

~ Buy Tickets for Quartet in Autumn ~

Marking the first ever stage adaptation of Barbara Pym’s Booker Prize-shortlisted novel, Arcola Theatre hosts the world premiere of Quartet in Autumn, adapted for the stage by Booker Prize-winning "Orbital" author Samantha Harvey.

A wry and poignant ode to ageing, friendship and the strange poetry of everyday life, set in 1970s London, it follows four co-workers as they approach retirement, each quietly marking time. As the seasons turn, they go about their daily rituals and routines. Together, they form a quartet – a fragile compact to get through the days.

The reviews are in:

"It feels right that the first stage adaptation of a Barbara Pym novel comes not with great fanfare, but in a delicate production at the small Arcola Theatre, a defiantly untrendy play in one of London’s trendiest theatres. After all, Pym’s peerless chronicling of quiet lives — a world of parochial church council meetings and dusty academics and medium sherry — never was quite on trend, and she was long ignored by a literary world that prized flashier stories." ★★★★ (Financial Times).

"Not the stuff of high drama, you’d think, and you’d be right. But Pym, Harvey and director Dominic Dromgoole weave a compelling miniature tapestry from the emotional evasions and thwarted intimacies of a quartet living lives (as Thoreau put it) 'of quiet desperation'. The play is also a snapshot of 70s London, of food coupons, £20,000 semis and Van der Valk on the telly. And it furnishes superb roles for four character actors of a certain age." ★★★★ (The Standard).

"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. They are all very funny, but the production never reduces them to figures of fun. The humour is shared; a survival strategy." ★★★★ (Time Out).

"Subtle and absorbing... sad, funny and acutely observant." ★★★★ (The Stage).

"Their quirks are playfully hammed up in director Dominic Dromgoole’s production, and if it sometimes strives too deliberately for laughs, the four’s everyday grumbles remain pleasingly familiar. Curiously, their concerns about heating their homes and their jobs being replaced by computerised technology are just as relevant 50 years on." ★★★★ (The Guardian).

Overall: ★★★★

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