An Inspector Calls by J B Priestley, April-May 1995

 At The Comedy Theatre 

Tues- Sat 8pm Until May 20, 1995

Reviewer: Kate Herbert for The Melbourne Times. Reviewed late April 1995

 

The most extraordinary thing about J B Priestley's An Inspector Calls is director Stephen Daldry's inspired staging. An elevated doll's house, home of the nasty, superior Birling family, teeters on stilts above a blasted war-time London streetscape.

 

 In the first scene our view is restricted. We peer through windows just as do the working class on the street.  Even the staircase is disconnected from the outside world. The building and the family appear inaccessible, impenetrable and invincible from their privileged upper- class position.

 

Not so. An inspector arrives to bring them to task about the suicide of a working-class girl they have all known in some capacity. He blows their world and their house wide open to his piercing eye and the torrential rain which pours onto the stage.

 

The script written in 1946 and set in 1912, is a humanist / socialist commentary on the invidious class system of Edwardian Britain and it remains pertinent today. Daldry's production for the National Theatre has revamped it for the London, New York, Tokyo and Australian stage.

 

There are moments of Brechtian political diatribe such as Inspector Goole's departing speech and director Stephen Daldry has accentuated the alienation through stark lighting effects, addressing the audience directly and by adding roving, inquisitive children and a silent majority of adult observers.

 

The maid, (Georgina Beer) who is unheard and invisible for most of the script, remains on stage constantly, tipping rubbish, carrying chairs, even rolling out a red carpet for the terrifying matriarch, Mrs. Birling, (Helen Lindsay) all as a reminder of the class distinction.

 

Barry Foster as the Inspector / Confessor gives an impeccable performance, both passionate and vigorous. The other performances are all exceptional as the characters face their judgement day in a crumbling world under a drenched sky.

 

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