SPANNING the years 1949-1971 this thought-provoking revival opens with gorgeous Gershwin music caressing a set featuring a New York apartment and a London antiquarian bookshop.

It’s a wistful, innocent true story of a developing friendship between feisty American writer Helene Hanff and reserved married English bookseller Frank Doel.

Years before emails and mobile phones communication was by letter for both business and friendship. This unusual play is epistolary as Helene and Frank exchange business letters which gradually grow warmer, revealing emotions and feelings.

Clive Francis is superb as Frank, ageing gracefully with his wife, daughters and love of books.

Janie Dee is mesmeric as the eccentric Helene, a Jewish New Yorker obsessed with the Catholic Cardinal Newman, the poet John Donne and a romanticised vision of Englishness.

Helene could easily buy her beloved books in America yet orders them from Frank in London. She castigates him over Britain’s behaviour following the 1776 American War of Independence yet bawls her way through the English national anthem on the radio.

The play’s pace is pedestrian, although early 1950s social history with its grim post-war austerity and rationing is convincingly conveyed.

Unfortunately the late 1950s explosion of youth culture and rock ’n’ roll rebellion is ignored.

And the 1960s rich renaissance of literature, fashion and pop music gets only a brief taste of Carnaby Street and The Beatles’ Yesterday.