AN INSPECTOR CALLS To 20 June.
Oxford/Leicester.
AN INSPECTOR CALLS
by J B Priestley.
Oxford Playhouse To 13 June.
Wed, Thu, Sat 7.30pm Fri 8pm Mat Wed, Thu, Sat 2.30pm all performacnes except Sat 2.30pm sold out.
TICKETS: 01865 305305.
www.oxfordplayhouse.com
then Curve Leicester 16-20 June 2009.
7.30pm Mat Wed, Thu, Sat 2.15pm
Post-show discussion Thu 7.30pm.
TICKETS: 0116 242 3595.
www.curveonline.co.uk
Runs 1hr 50min No interval.
Review: Alan Geary: 2 June at Theatre Royal Nottingham.
Stephen Daldry’s production is as brilliant as ever.
It’s now seventeen years since Stephen Daldry’s Inspector first called. The production still seems as brilliant as ever.
On Ian MacNeil’s ingeniously expressionist set Inspector Goole summons each character in turn out of his/her self-satisfied little world represented by an under-sized house, to do his breaking-down.
Inside the house it’s 1912. Outside in the cobbled and rainy street - it really pours, properly wet water - it’s wartime 1940s, which is when Priestley wrote the play. The guilty people are being beckoned from their own era to face the judgement of the 1940s generation. And it’s a spectacle with startling relevance to 2009.
Every visual feature is made to work at various levels. The ruined house at the end of the play is a bricks and mortar casualty of WWII, but it’s also the discredited Edwardian social order, and, at the same time, the shattered complacency of the play’s characters. Right at the outset it’s suggested that the street-children in an air-raid are victims of the power-wielders of an earlier era. Later on the group of everyday bystanders watching the action are Priestley’s free community of the British people united in a common purpose. The only unselfconscious humanity in the play comes from them.
There’s a powerful message. Each of us must live our lives with an awareness of The Common Good, of our interdependence and moral responsibility for one another. If we do not we shall all, sooner rather than later, perish together. But there are some laughs along the way, mostly arising from the dramatic irony and the intentional stereotypes.
The latter are all well presented. David Roper’s Arthur Birling, the nouveau riche Yorkshire factory owner, is excellent. Likewise Louis Hilyer’s Inspector Goole; in his 1940s raincoat and trilby he’s a deliberately over-aggressive and unrealistic plod. Arguably, Robin Whiting over-does dissolute son Eric in his confessional scene, but he’s splendid nevertheless. So are Sandra Duncan (Sybil), Marianne Oldham (Sheila) and Alisdair Simpson (Gerald).
Interestingly, and rightly, there’s no interval.
This is rewarding theatre at many levels, of course. But, more than most of Priestley’s work, An Inspector Calls still holds up simply as an entertaining thriller.
Inspector Goole: Louis Hilyer.
Sybil Birling: Sandra Duncan.
Arthur Birling: David Roper.
Gerald Croft: Alisdair Simpson.
Sheila Birling: Marianne Oldham.
Eric Birling: Robin Whiting.
Edna: Diana Payne-Myers.
Director: Stephen Daldry.
Designer: Ian MacNeil.
Lighting: Rick Fisher.
2009-06-10 00:51:07