THEATRE REVIEW: Quality Street - The Octagon Theatre, Bolton.

Northern Broadsides Theatre Company, in association with Staffordshire's New Vic Theatre's latest production is the long-awaited 'Quality Street'. Starting an ill-fated tour prior to the pandemic and lockdowns, the play is now on a short tour, and is at Bolton's Octagon Theatre until the 6th May.

Famous mostly for the creation of 'Peter Pan', JM Barrie's 'Quality Street' was his seminal work during his lifetime, and occasionally gets an airing these days. Written at the turn of the 20th century, the play harks back to almost a century earlier and the Regency era, the time of "mad" King George and the Battle of Waterloo. In fact the play starts in 1805, with a young lady, Phoebe Throssel, falling madly in love with a well-to-do gentleman of the town and eligible bachelor, Valentine Brown. However, Brown enlists in the army and goes off to war, becoming a Captain and something of a hero during Waterloo and returning home ten years' later as both a doctor and an invalid, to find Miss Throssel and her sister both spinsters and schoolteachers. It is there that the play truly gets going and the mores of the time prevent either from truly telling each other the way they feel, and so some dissembling and pretending has to be done, before the eventual happy conclusion.

However, director Laurie Sansom has obfuscated this somewhat by making it a play-within-a-play. The company rehearse in Halifax, and the Mackintosh factory that produces the famous Quality Street chocolates is close by; and so he invited some of the workers in to watch and comment on the rehearsals. These documented comments from real workers were then included and so a piece of verbatim theatre surrounds Barrie's work. The play starts in the present day and we see the Quality Street workers sitting around during their break, chatting openly and freely to the audience, there is no fourth wall here... we are all 'in on it', and we all understand that they have been asked to play a part in the production. They reappear between each act to set the furniture etc, and again at the end to have a short feedback / Q+A session about the play. This should have served to add an extra dimension to the play, and to give the audience a contemporary insight into the plot and the characters as we go along, however in reality it simply lengthened the play, and made it more disjointed.

The 'actual' play of 'Quality Street' has absolutely nothing to do with the chocolates at all... it is the other way round, and even then, the link is tenuous inasmuch as the chocolates were named after the "image" of the play - a Tchaikovskyesque chocolate soldier and "Miss Sweetly", not the play itself. 

Sansom's production utilises a nondescript set which has elements of the 20th century in it (the Mackintosh factory) a metal-framed doorway and part wall, a metal-framed bay window seat, and a few items of furniture that do not expressly represent the Regency era. Costuming too is all over the place with fanciful and shiny dresses for the Ball made to resemble the wrappers of the Quality Street chocolates, as well as many items which simply did not belong in the requisite era. Whilst his direction allowed twentieth century mannerisms and dance routines to intermingle vagariously with those of Barrie's era and those of the Regency period!

The play has a cast of 9, and all, except Valentine, Phoebe and her sister Susan play at least two roles within it. This also becomes a little confusing at times as their characterisations are perhaps not different enough, or the actor / actress does not accurately represent the character they are supposed to be portraying. Louisa-May Parker was a forever-fretting and concerned older sister Susan and her characterisation was solid throughout giving us a much needed anchor for the highs and lows of those who flit and flirt around her. Paula Lane and Aron Julius worked well together as protagonists Phoebe and Valentine, and I enjoyed their denouement scene greatly.

I don't think Sansom found as much comedy in the play as perhaps there could / should have been, and overall this was a play of very mixed messages. The production was certainly played with its tongue in its cheek and the emphasis was most definitely on 'fun', even if the humour didn't always land where it ought to have, with the audience barely raising more than a titter throughout. His direction bordered on pantomime at times, and Greek tragedy at others, whilst different centuries (early 19th / early 20th and early 21st) all battling it out for supremacy throughout simply made it a very unsatisfying, disappointing, and incoherent watch.

Reviewer - Matthew Dougall
on - 24.4.23