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QUENTIN LETTS: They breed 'em tough in this thirties typing pool!

London Wall (St James Theatre)

Verdict: 1931 timepiece restored

Rating:

Flirty: Alex Robertson as Mr Brewer and Maia Alexander as Pat Milligan in London Wall

Stage stoic of the week was actress Maia Alexander who, on Tuesday night, cycling home from the St James Theatre where she is in the lead role, came a terrible cropper and split open her chin.

She spent most of a sleepless night in A&E. On Wednesday night, to the old refrain of ‘the show must go on’, she stepped out on the St James stage maybe a little stiff in the bones and — for all I know — a touch concussed.

On her chin was a very visible plaster. Yet she pulled off her role as a 19-year-old secretary in 1931 London with aplomb.

John Van Druten’s London Wall, revived after 82 years, is a gentle comedy about the love lives and regrets of shorthand typists at a firm of London solicitors. Miss Alexander’s Pat is pursued by shy Hec (Timothy O’Hara) and the markedly more confident Mr Brewer (Alex Robertson).

The other women dream of finding Mr Right. If they can become engaged, they will become ‘sisters of the ring’.

Miss Janus (Alix Dunmore) realises she is on the shelf at 35. She tells Pat to seize the day with sweet Hec, but can he summon the courage to ask for a kiss?

  More... QUENTIN LETTS: If it weren't so madly confusing, it would be an affair to remember QUENTIN LETTS: Tempest? More like a chilly breeze... intrusion of city life becomes a fatal distraction to Shakespeare

Did you see the photographs this week of a Paris flat that had not been touched since the Forties?

This play brings the same sense of throwback, of rediscovered treasure. Look out for references to the unemployment of Thirties London.

The first half is too slow, though Miss Alexander’s injury may not have helped. The moving second half is much better.

Two particularly lovely moments: when Pat consoles Miss Janus after she receives bad tidings via a newspaper, and when Hec finally gives Pat a present.

Director Tricia Thorns capitalises on the very English understatement of it all.

David Whitworth brings deep tones to the boss of the firm. Eleanor Yates and Mia Austen catch the eye as typing pool girls.

As for Miss Alexander, she is a natural. The producers might be well advised to pay for a taxi home for her in the evenings.

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