84, Charing Cross Road (Special Event)
By Helene Hanff, James Roose-Evans
Directed by: Charlotte Headrick
Performance: Oct. 18, 2025

This wonderful show is a dramatization of business letters between a young struggling writer in New York and an antiquarian book store in London. In a sense, these are also love letters. They are about the love of good literature. The play takes place over a twenty year period, beginning in 1949 when Helene Hanff (played on Broadway by Ellen Burstyn) first writes Marks & Co. and ends in 1969 with the death of Frank Doel, the delightfully dusty supplier of so many old volumes to Helen who has shown her gratitude through the years by sending “care packages” to the staff of Marks & Co.
Director
Charlotte J. Headrick is a Professor Emerita of Theatre Arts at Oregon State University. A past president of the American Conference for Irish Studies, West, she has directed numerous premieres and productions of Irish plays all over the United States, particularly those written by women. She is widely published in the field of Irish drama. A former Moore Visiting Fellow at the National University of Ireland, Galway, she is co-editor with Eileen Kearney of Irish Women Dramatists 1908-2001 (2014, 2016 Syracuse University Press). She is the recipient of the Kennedy Center/American College Theater Festival Medallion for service to that organization. She is also a Distinguished Professor for Undergraduate Teaching at Oregon State. As an actress, favorite roles include Madam Baptista in The Taming of the Shrew, Kate in All My Sons, Rima in Frank McGuiness’s Dolly West’s Kitchen, Countess Roussillon in All’s Well That Ends Well, Duke Senior in As You Like It (directed by her former student Seattle director Sheila Daniles). She is a member of Actor’s Equity Association. In March of 2023, she portrayed Betty in Christian O’Reilly’s Chapatti in a reading at ACT.
Director’s email: cheadrick@oregonstate.edu
Cast of Characters
Helene Hanff:Harriet Nixon
Frank Doel: Rick Wallace