Quality Street

Rogue Theatre Company kicks off its third full season with the period comedy Quality Street from Peter Pan author J.M. Barrie. The play is a romantic comedy about mistaken identity, social propriety, and the bad taste of cold revenge. It follows the story of two upper-middle class sisters, Phoebe and Susan, who believe that Phoebe is about to be proposed to. Instead they find, to their horror, that her beau considers her only a friend, and in fact his big announcement was not a proposal but rather news of his joining the army to fight Napoleon. On top of that, he’s given them financial advice that goes wrong and causes them to lose most of their savings, forcing them to open a school, a job to which neither is well-suited. When the soldier-beau returns ten years later the young, beautiful Phoebe has aged disproportionately, but when she puts on the wedding dress Susan gave her she looks so young and pretty that he mistakes her for someone else. She decides to play on his mistake to get revenge on him for leaving her, but her plan quickly spins out of control. Rogue’s Quality Street” adds a twist-in order to let the audience experience the potently absurd stage directions, author J.M. Barrie will greet audiences in the lobby and interact with them throughout the show.