Pep and pace give this epistolary warhorse a new lease on life at the Ensemble. What promises to be a gently charming evening of epistolary lawn tennis instead plays out like high-stakes ping pong.

Adapted by James Roose-Evans from New York writer Helene Hanff’s slender 1970 memoir, 84 Charing Cross Road charts a transatlantic love affair of sorts between Hanff, then a struggling writer, and Frank Doel, manager of an antiquarian bookshop in London.

Erik Thomson and Blazey Best in 84 Charing Cross Road. Photo © Prudence Upton

Beginning in 1949, the relationship blooms through a flow of airmailed letters and orders for books by largely forgotten authors. Hanff (played here by Blazey Best) is mad for William Hazlitt, John Henry Newman, the diaries of Samuel Pepys and obscure Elizabethan love poetry – which Doel (Erik Thomson), a bibliophile with the sharp eye of a practised dealer, is only too delighted to supply at prices Hanff can’t resist.

As the years pass, however, their correspondence grows warmer and the relationship takes on deeper colours; we sense a mutual curiosity and admiration building. They yearn to meet. But in these times and circumstances, that’s no easy thing. At one point, Doel extends an open invitation for Hanff to visit, but her writing commitments, dental treatments and burgeoning career as a television scriptwriter always seem to hold her back. The advent of the telephone has no bearing on the story whatsoever.

Just as well, perhaps; Doel is happily married. And besides, as in many epistolary relationships, it is the fantasy that sustains them, not the reality. At times, their feelings can seem more emblematic than real – of dowdy Britain’s susceptibility to American energy; of America’s love of the pageantry of Ye Olde Englande.

Erik Thomson and Blazey Best in 84 Charing Cross Road. Photo © Prudence Upton

Mark Kilmurry’s full-set production – designed and costumed by Nick Fry, with books floor-to-ceiling and warmly lit by Matt Cox – keeps Hanff and Doel in close proximity: Hanff upstage in her ground-floor New York apartment; Doel centre stage at his London desk. They are never more than a few steps apart, lending the proceedings a constant frisson of possibility, especially in a brief, beautifully judged moment when each places a book on opposite sides of the same open shelf.

The leads are a study in contrasting energies: Best’s Hanff is brassy and bright; Thomson’s Doel warmly restrained. It is fundamentally a sentimental work, but sharp timing and subtle emotional detail keep this staging supple and alive. Katie Fitchett, Angela Mahlatjie and Brian Meegan play Doel’s bookstore colleagues, though only Mahlatjie is given much opportunity to register as more than background texture.

I saw a British production of this 20-something years ago. All I can remember is that I could scarcely stay awake. Here though, Kilmurry kept me pleasurably engaged throughout and even twanged a heart string with its final twist.

84 Charing Cross Road plays at the Ensemble Theatre, Kirribilli until 13 June.