Quality Street, Richmond Theatre Review

★ ★ ★ ★

Reviewer - Becky

*Disclaimer: Gifted tickets in return for an honest review.

Quality Street is a light, refreshing romantic comedy about a returning lover, an alter-ego and a determined heroine. It’s a play within a play, as we follow chocolate factory workers from the start on their way to watch the well-loved play written by Peter Pan author J M Barrie. The play even gave its name to the popular tinned sweets!

We follow two sisters, Phoebe (Paula Lane) and Susan (Louisa-May Parker), during the Napoleonic Wars. Phoebe falls in love with a gentleman whom she believes is willing to propose marriage but has seemingly got the wrong impression as he announces he is enlisting to fight in the war. Phoebe is left heartbroken and left to wonder what if for the next ten years as she opens up a school for seemingly unruly children, causing her to become stressed and almost age quickly. Much to her distaste, she takes on the likes of Livvy, a parallel to herself and a likeliness of her younger self and from this chaos and comedy ensue.

Directed by Laurie Sansom the cast filled the stage every minute of the performance. The characters were all deliciously charming but the dialogue fell a little flat, if not dragged out in certain scenes. I couldn’t help but feel as though certain scenes could’ve been cut a lot shorter if not for constant repetition in some spots. This being said, Jelani D’Aguilar came through with much-needed light comedy relief with his performances of the many characters throughout the show. He was most certainly the one who stood out to me. The rest of the cast worked very well together and blended between different roles and I didn’t find this distracting at all.

Paula Lane delivers some really raw emotion in her scenes, a nice breakaway from the jokes dotted throughout. You do empathize with her character's struggles as well as her dear love for her sister Susan. Aron Julius also puts on a likeable performance of the love interest.

The play does include some interesting use of puppetry, which definitely took me by surprise when they first appeared, if not also a little terrifying. It would’ve been more to the shows' benefit, in my opinion, if they had used child actors to fulfil these roles as opposed to puppets, but I understand this was a creative choice due to the nature of the play.

Lighting (Joe Price) and Sound (Nick Sagar) partnered well with the story. It was very simplistic and was used well for the transitions of the story, but was not much of a stand out, unfortunately. The set also remained almost the same throughout, with the use of ensemble characters changing a few props throughout.

Quality Street is a charming play, with its fair share of comedic lines, a plethora of characters and a little bit of heart. It’s all about growing old and remembering to always stay true to yourself and is sure to delight some.