THE Church Times is not often mentioned in drama, but it gets a number of name-checks in Samantha Harvey’s stage adaptation of the Barbara Pym novel Quartet in Autumn, now playing at the Arcola Theatre, in the London hipster district of Dalston.

The 1977 book came towards the end of Pym’s career and captures the shifting sands of an era before the 1980s took virulent hold. Its premise is simple: the senescent lives of four colleagues who work together in an office somewhere near Holborn. Two men and two women, all single, and, in due course, the two women retire. These are sepia-toned lives. Their values and points of reference are from a bygone age, which they acknowledge themselves. But they are also lives of value, and people of genuine concern.

Samantha Harvey (who won the Booker in 2024 with Orbital; Pym was nominated for Quartet) finds the gentle humour in this comedy of manners and prayer. They are all characters who lurk at the edges of parish and deanery-synod life, equally recognisable in workplaces and extended families.

Paul Rider is bluff Norman, wonderfully tactless and insensitive, almost deaf to the cares of those around him. Marcia, played by Pooky Quesnel, is spiky and acidulous. She talks a lot about her ailments but stonewalls medical questions when others enquire, and has a romantic fantasy about her consultant.

Anthony Calf is Edwin, a fussy, churchy widower who brings Pym’s gift for the Anglican still-life gloriously alive. At a couple of moments, he bursts assuringly into the plainsong Office hymn “O blest Creator”. Kate Duchêne’s Letty is possibly the best part. Starting the show in a plastic rain bonnet tied under her chin, she contemplates what it means to be a spinster and what life there might be beyond the workplace.

Time and again, Pym’s genius for dialogue comes through — complete with the witty one-liners — and her feel for farce amid the tragi-comedy is similarly present, including offstage clergy. Harvey has brilliantly transposed the action sections of the novel to monologue or conversation. Her fluency is shaped by the deft hand of the director, Dominic Dromgoole. He respects the characters’ interior lives and allows for their expression to land with impeccable comic timing and quiet pathos.

The Arcola is a small studio space, and the piece is performed in the round. It allows for an intimate encounter with a faceted gem, like visiting the Crown jewels. The ’70s details are there, artfully brought out in Ellie Wintour’s costumes and set: tinned food, typewriters, milk bottles, sports jackets, avocado mousse, Cyprus sherry, even a Gannex mac.

And the Church Times? Edwin writes a reference on behalf of Letty for a prospective landlady with the endorsement that she sometimes “leafs through the pages” of his CT. Letty, meanwhile, tries to steady her newfound retirement freedom: “The Church Times says I should do the Stations of the Cross and avoid solitary drinking.” Then she swigs from a wine glass; cue laughter.

Thank goodness for the light among the shade, for this stunning ensemble, and their reminder of Pym’s such faithful human touch.

Quartet in Autumn is on at the Arcola Theatre, 24 Ashwin Street, London E8, until 20 June. Phone 020 7503 1646. arcolatheatre.com