Expect no sword fights or love scenes at Theatre in the Rough this fall. Instead, they’re opening their 25th season with the quieter scenes of life in “84 Charing Cross Road,” the story of a bookish New York screenwriter and her London book buyer’s 20-year friendship carried out in letters.
It’s not a love story but something rarer: the story of two kindred souls, said Theatre in the Rough co-founder Katie Jensen.
“It’s kind of a lost art to have friendship that doesn’t involve any kind of love interest,” Jensen said, “but does involve the art of letter writing and the love of literature during a time when the (World War II) had just destroyed the entire world.”
Jensen plays Helene Hanff who began writing to Frank Doel, played by Theatre in the Rough’s other co-founder Aaron Elmore, at Marks & Co. Booksellers in 1949. Hanff has a taste for some outré and very specific books and as Doel hunts them down for her, they spark a friendship that grows to include others on bookstore’s staff. Hanff soon realizes, due to Britain’s post-war rationing, that her new friends on the other side of the Atlantic lack the things she takes for granted like meat and eggs, and she begins to send them regular packages. Zeb Bodine, Becky Orford and Sierra Trinchet make up the rest of the cast.
“I think one of the most amazing things about it, is it’s a true story,” Elmore said, “about a real woman and a real bookshop and it happens not so very long ago.”
The events in the play are small, he said. “They’re personal, it’s about getting a job, it’s about finding something marvelous, a book.”
The small scale of the play has given the actors the chance to really focus on bringing the characters to life.
“Some of them are fairly esoteric,” Elmore said, but because the play is based on their real letters, “you get the chance to hear some of their words as well … and they’re just as real and just as human as you.”
This November will be a busy time at Holy Trinity Episcopal Church on Fourth and Gold where Theatre in the Rough holds their plays in McPhetres Hall. The Glory Hole will be using some of the space to pack their Thanksgiving boxes and the church will cook about 300 pies in a single “herculean” effort the last Saturday of the play’s run.
All these activities going on around them “and realizing there was this marvelous act of charity at the heart of this piece that we’re doing about strangers sending food to each other across vast differences,” Elmore said, inspired Theatre in the Rough to get in on the giving. Theatre-goers are encouraged to bring in a non-perishable food item in return for a $2 discount on their ticket. And even for those who don’t bring anything, Theatre in the Rough will donate $2 to the Glory Hole and Head Start Families.
“84 Charing Cross Road” premiered last week and runs 7:30 p.m. on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays through Nov. 19, with two Sunday matinees on Nov. 12 and 20 at 2 p.m. Tickets are $15-20 and can be bought at www.jahc.org, any of the local bookstores or at the door. For more information, go to theatreinthrough.org.
Sierra Trinchet, Becky Orford and Katie Jensen in Theatre in the Rough’s production of “84 Charing Cross Road.”
