When you hear “Quality Street,” what instantly jumps to mind for most people is a purple tin of chocolates, one that's a particularly common sight during the holiday season.
The popular candy brand didn’t take its name from just anywhere, though: it’s actually inspired by a 1901 play by J.M. Barrie, the Scottish author and playwright best known for creating the character of Peter Pan. And this year Quality Street is the production that’s closing out the first half of the Fountain School of Performing Arts’ theatre season.
Set in early 19th-century England during the Napoleonic wars, the play focuses on two sisters, Phoebe and Susan Throssel. When Phoebe’s love interest, Dr. Valentine Brown, leaves town to fight in the wars, the sisters are forced to become school teachers to make ends meet. The play then jumps ahead 10 years to Valentine’s dramatic return and a series of comedic hijinks.
Peter Sarty as Valentine, admiring his reflection.
The production is directed by Marti Maraden, returning to the Fountain School after having last directed Lady Windermere’s Fan in 2012. The actor and director has spent 18 seasons at the Stratford Festival and seven seasons at the Shaw Festival, and has acted, directed or taught in every province of Canada and throughout the U.S.
Maraden says she has a real fondness for Barrie’s writing.
“What I like is he’s got just a touch of magic — not so directly in Quality Street, but in things that are playful and dare to go a step forward than you would in a play,” she explains. “He’s got a warm heart but he’s not cloying; just the right amount of sense of fun.”
She says she’s been “utterly charmed” working with the students on this particular production, saying that she’s loved watching the students discover the fun in playing characters that are age-appropriate but of an entirely different era and sensibility.
“Becoming those women and men, and dressing in their clothes and gloves and gowns: that is the adventure itself. My goal was to help these young people believe it, understand it, inhabit it. And then when the audience follows you there, they buy into the whole world.”
Ivy Charles as Phoebe Throssel, chatting with the troops.
For her, the joy of working with students comes from sharing with them the long lineage of theatre that's come before them.
“We don’t exist in isolation. Everything we do has a precursor. Everything we do has been done before, in a sense. It was born out of something. And it’s so great to teach young people, and remind myself, how connected we are through the centuries of theatre that have come before us.”
And she’s excited, in particular, to have audiences discover what’s inside Quality Street.
“It’s a lot like the chocolates,” she says. “It’s sheer delight.”
Quality Street runs through Saturday, December 5 in the Dunn Theatre of the Dalhousie Arts Centre, with shows at 7:30 p.m. nightly along with a 2 p.m. matinee on Saturday. .