Quartet in Autumn review – Samantha Harvey gives new life to Barbara Pym tale of imminent retirement

It’s no wonder why Barbara Pym’s bittersweet and quietly profound novel about four prickly office workers approaching retirement has not been adapted for the stage before. Its charm is tightly wedded to the rich interiority of its characters – Edwin, Letty, Marcia and Norman – who have unwittingly become each other’s closest confidants, despite insisting they are not quite friends, and that’s tricky to stage.

Pym’s book was shortlisted for the Booker prize in 1977, and it’s fitting that this first stage version comes from Samantha Harvey, whose own novel Orbital won that accolade in 2024. Though a little of its depth is inevitably lost, she proves a safe pair of hands.

This is a lean, prudent adaptation, stripped of peripheral characters. Pragmatic widower Edwin (Anthony Calf) is sustained by his commitment to a churchly life. Sensitive, accommodating Letty (Kate Duchêne) is afraid of spending her retirement alone now that her best friend is absorbed in a late-life romance. Uptight Marcia (Pooky Quesnel) is swept up in a fantasy bond with her doctor, and obsessively storing canned foods while barely eating enough to function. Norman (Paul Rider) is a relentless blunderer, whose deadpan tactlessness could give The Office’s David Brent a run for his money.

Infinite possibilities … Anthony Calf, Kate Duchêne and Paul Rider in Quartet in Autumn. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian

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. But Ellie Wintour’s costumes of chunky knits and oversized specs help root it in the 1970s, while her set design evokes their nondescript office with a pod of desks facing each other. When a character has inner thoughts to share – which they frequently do in a story where more is thought than said – Dromgoole has them rise to stand under a spotlight.

The novel was famously Pym’s comeback, written after 15 years of rejection from publishers. It ends with Letty musing on how life holds “infinite possibilities” – and so it seems watching these crotchety antiheroes take their first steps off the page half a century after they were written.