THEATRE REVIEW: Quality Street - The Crucible Theatre, Sheffield.

Nearly 90 years after his death, J. M. Barrie has weathered changing fashions better than many of his playwriting contemporaries. Unlike Shaw or Galsworthy, he never won the Nobel Prize and even in his lifetime the perceived ‘whimsicality’ of his best-known plays attracted some derision; but the public loved them and continued to love them until some time after the Second World War when, 'Peter Pan' apart, they mysteriously vanished from the world’s stages. That Barrie’s plays are whimsical is not a point to argue - even in his realistic dramas ('What Every Woman Knows' and, up to a point, 'The Admirable Crichton') we sense that fairyland is only just beyond the drawing room door. But the reason so many of his dramas have survived as stageworthy vehicles is down to two things: their rich theatricality and the strain of wry, unassuming humour that runs through them. 

Both are in plentiful evidence in 'Quality Street', one of his earliest successes: ostensibly a light West End comedy set during and in the immediate aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars. Valentine Brown, a dashing young physician, is a friend and advisor to the Throstle sisters, Phoebe and Susan: it’s widely assumed  he will shortly propose marriage to Phoebe and when he calls round with notice of his intention to make an announcement, the sisters know what it will be. They are both wrong-footed: Valentine’s announcement is of his intention to join the army. Off he goes, leaving the sisters to ponder the consequences of an unwise investment he urged upon them, which has left them penniless. They have no alternative but to earn money by setting up their own school, but both prove hopeless teachers. Then Valentine returns from the wars, minus a hand, to find his remembered ringletted Phoebe transformed into an old maid of thirty.  

Phoebe determines to get even and to get her man by assuming the identity of a fictional niece ‘Livvy’, in which persona she captivates all the local men with her vivacity and pert dance moves. That Valentine will see the error of his ways is practically a given from the start, but Barrie works out his plot with such charm and ingenuity that we can’t feel short-changed.  

In Laurie Sansom’s production for Northern Broadsides,  the star-crossed lovers are persuasively characterised by Aron Julius and Paula Lane, with excellent support from Louisa-May Palmer as Susan and a rambunctious turn from Gilly Tompkins as the comical housemaid Patty. An effective (and economical) touch is provided in the Second Act when puppets are used to animate the children in the sisters’ school. But the decision to add a prologue and interpolated commentary from workers at the Mackintosh confectionary factory (as was) in Halifax served no purpose other than to reference the famous confectionary boxes which took their name from the play. To this reviewer at least, these sections made for a jarring contrast with Barrie’s text and added nothing of value to a play that can stand by itself.  

A slightly qualified recommendation, then, for this worthwhile revival.  

Reviewer - Paul Ashcroft
on - 25.4.23