First published in The Tab, 3 March 2010.

When I tell you I was grateful to be out of Pembroke’s New Cellars by 9pm, do not misunderstand me. Yes, Quality Street is infuriatingly vapid. The plot is pointless and predictable, the characters two-dimensional and the language whimsical even by J. M. Barrie’s standards. But the Pembroke Players, led by a marvellously neurotic Caitlin Doherty, did the best they could with a second-rate script and put on a very entertaining show. And let’s be honest: we might level the same dramaturgical criticisms at Oscar Wilde. His popularity is no worse off for them being valid.

That said, it would be madness to compare Barrie to the author of Lady Windemere’s Fan, and no amount of clever innuendo makes up for his lack of dramatic subtlety. “One thing we discovered during rehearsals,” confided a member of the cast to me, somewhat churlishly, before his stage debut this evening, “was that J. M. Barrie couldn’t write plays.” Read the rest of this entry »