AN INSPECTOR CALLS. To 18 November.

Mold/Tour.

AN INSPECTOR CALLS
by J B Priestley.

Clwyd Theatr Cymru (Emlyn Williams Theatre) To 21 October then tour to 18 November 2006.
Mon-Sat 7.45pm Mat Sat 2.45pm.
Audio-described 12 Oct, 21 Oct 2.45pm.
Captioned 14 Oct 2.45pm.
Post-show discussion 12, 19 Oct.
Runs 2hr 20min One interval.

TICKETS: 0845 330 3565.
www.clwyd-theatr-cymru.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 29 September.

First, trust your script…
Barry Kyle’s work on Priestley’s play amounts less to directing than interfering. No significant moment passes, no important character gets named without a sound effect, musical chord or projected face. Yet the play is a supreme example of non-realistic elements in beautifully-designed tension with a realistic surface. And an overtly theatrical approach has been done with rare success in Stephen Daldry’s production, which has held the stage off-and-on since 1989.

Kyle reduces Priestley’s characters to director’s puppets. His over-emphasis increases the play’s occasional gloating hindsight, as when businessman Arthur Birling boasts of the “unsinkable” Titanic or, this being 1912, confidence declares there’ll be no war. Robert Blythe has to measure out the Titanic’s ports with wine-glasses on the floor (though a family meal has just ended, there’s no table).

And the war, lest we forget, arrives as the rotating square stage finally upends (recalling the more subtly-handled tilting house Ian McNeill provided for Daldry) to reveal a trench: overkill in all directions.

Characters move largely to fit thematic images, scattering down the sides, or assembling near the middle as their confidence recovers. Blythe parades round the stage, except when the Inspector’s parading there instead. Young Sheila’s given to lying on the floor, possibly in sympathy with the young working-woman her family’s driven to suicide.

Yet there are good performances. Blythe’s a mainstay, as so often at Mold, Elizabeth Counsell shows an Edwardian wife in her husband’s shadow, Daniel Llewellyn-Willams’s a robust Gerald, contrasted by Dennis Herdman’s Eric, whose discontent with his parents’ complacent society is one point well-made here.

In a realistic production Rosanna Lavelle’s daughter would seem wildly anachronistic. Here, among repeated modern images, her distraught Sheila becomes dynamic. The Inspector needs careful control. Kyle has made his actor a contender for Most-Inappropriate-Performance-Of-The-Year Award. In his swirling, red-lined coat he’s a cross between a charismatic student leader and a local Dracula. His repeated reminders about Eva Smith’s death have a vehemence that grows as tiresome as the good folk of County Mayo came to find Christy Mahon’s boast of killing his da with the loy. That can’t be right.

Arthur Birling: Robert Blythe.
Sybil Birling: Elizabeth Counsell.
Sheila Birling: Rosanna Lavelle.
Eric Birling: Dennis Herdman.
Gerald Croft: Daniel Llewellyn-Williams.
Edna: Charlotte Gray-Jones.
Inspector Goole: Aaron Cass.

Director: Barry Kyle.
Designer: Martyn Bainbridge.
Lighting/Projections: Arnim Friess.
Sound: Kevin Heyes.
Composer: Ilona Sekacz.
Assistant director: Amy Bonsall.

2006-10-03 01:15:10