Inside the Quality Street factory...

Come and meet Jo, Sandra, Brenda, Barbara and Lotte, the women whose stories of working in the Quality Street factory inspired part of Northern Broadside's regency rom-com.

Back in 2020 (the couple of months before it all went wrong!), Northern Broadsides invited workers from the Quality Street chocolate factory to watch the play in rehearsals and get their take on the story that inspired the name of the famous chocolates.

Every week they'd go to the rehearsal room at Halifax's Dean Clough to watch the cast rehearsing, with the performers and director asking them to comment on each act, saying what they thought about the characters and plot. They’d share brilliant anecdotes about their experiences working in the chocolate factory, with the team recording them to refer to later down the line; but their observations were so comical, insightful, and authentic, they decided to use them in the final play.

All about Jo, Sandra, Brenda, Barbara and Lotte:

• Jo worked in the Quality Street offices for 38 years, many of which (she confessed) were spent filing her nails. She likes reading Jane Austen and prefers not to be the centre of attention;

• Sandra worked at the factory from 1987 - 2019, on the Friday night shift in the ‘nut house’ with Brenda. She'd never been to the theatre until she saw Quality Street in 2020;

• Brenda worked at the factory for 30 years in various roles, from putting the nuts on Walnut Whips to driving a forklift truck;

• Barbara started working in the factory on the shop floor when she was 16 and worked there for just shy of 50 years. She met her husband at the factory and her parents also worked there!;

• Lotte came from Austria after WWII to work in the mills in Halifax and, 16 years later, began working at the Mackintosh factory.

Laurie Sansom, Artistic Director and CEO of Northern Broadsides, said:

“When we first created the show in 2020 we worked with five women who, between them, have over 150 years working in the Quality Street factory in Halifax.

"We'd share different sections of the play and they'd tell us their thoughts, sharing their own stories about thwarted love affairs, messy relationships and growing old disgracefully. It got us thinking: could we actually use their very words, framing the action of the play?

"So the actors now also play the five women from the Halifax chocolate factory, who at certain points in the play, comment on the action - a bit like a theatrical Gogglebox!”

You can see Quality Street at the SJT from 6-10 June, with tickets from £10.