Issue 90: 2017 02 02: An Inspector Calls (Lynda Goetz)

02 February 2017

An Inspector Calls by J B Priestley

The Playhouse Theatre.

Reviewed by Lynda Goetz 

This is a play familiar to many.  Perhaps you appeared in a school production, or one of your children studied it as a set text for GCSE, or your local theatre produced a version; whatever the source, it is at least vaguely familiar, and celebrated its 70th anniversary in 2015.  Not a piece of new theatre then, nor indeed a new production.  This production by Stephen Daldry first saw the light of day nearly 25 years ago.  Nevertheless it is a play and a production which retain impact today.

It is 1912 and the prosperous Birling family are celebrating the engagement of their daughter Shelia to the son of another successful local businessman.  The tone is self-congratulatory, smug and insular.  The arrival of Inspector Goole shatters the evening, as each member of the party, in turn, is shown a picture of a local girl who has apparently just killed herself by swallowing cleaning fluid.  It transpires that each one of them has, in some way, had an interaction with the girl which implicates all of them in her death.  The reaction of the younger members of the family to this knowledge differs markedly from that of their parents, still wedded to their ideas of social status.

The first performance of this play, rather oddly, took place in Moscow in 1945.  Given J.B. Priestley’s politics, however, this is not quite as surprising as it sounds.  This play was an unsubtle attack on the self-satisfied middle classes by a committed socialist.  Early productions focused heavily on the pre-war setting of the play, fossilising it to some extent.  The brilliance of Stephen Daldry’s award-winning production is that, although the dress and attitudes of the Birlings may mark them out as pre-First World War, the way the set is constructed brings the play out of its Edwardian drawing-room setting into a more universal appeal to social conscience.

The Birlings’ house looks almost dolls-house like, safe and cosy.  It is juxtaposed with a bleak cobbled street.  The link between the two is a somewhat fragile spiral staircase.  At the point of collapse, porcelain, cutlery and candelabra are smashed and scattered into the street below.  The intrusion of reality is almost shocking.

Liam Brennan was brilliant as the mysterious Inspector.  Sheila was, on Saturday night, played by the understudy Sophie May-Wake who dealt with her role with understanding and perception as she moved from ‘spoilt brat’ to recognition and realisation.  Diane Payne-Myers deserves a special mention as the servant Edna.  She first performed this role at the Garrick Theatre in the 1990s and has apparently performed in Stephen Daldry’s production more than any other actor.  A passing nod too, to the role of the tricoteuses at the guillotine which is superbly executed.

The production runs until 25th March.  Do go and see it if you have the chance.

 

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