Stephen Daldry’s award-winning production of ‘An Inspector Calls’ continues to tour the country with every level of success as seen in past productions.
Stephen Daldry’s award-winning production of ‘An Inspector Calls’ continues to tour the country with every level of success as seen in past productions.
The play, by J.B. Priestley, investigates the moral human conscience as Inspector Goole arrives at the Birling home to investigate a young girl’s death, with the results devastating for the family.
The play opens with a vast Edwardian curtain being lifted to reveal a landscape scourged by the Second World War and the Birling house suspended above the scene on stilts which prove to be more stable than the foundations of the duplicitous family. The cinematic sense of watching early events unfolding through a closed house establishes the intimacy of the scenario, which is wrenched apart as events begin.
Tom Mannion, who plays Goole, is mysterious and authoritative, delivering a performance full of intrigue. Karen Archer, as Sybil Birling, is just as unlikable as anticipated, but the masterful performances of Henry Gilbert (Eric) and Kelly Hotten (Sheila) shined as bright as the following revelations. Sheila’s slap on Gerald Croft, her fiancé, brings a gasp that is palpable by the audience’s shock whereas Gilbert has a suave if undignified swagger that makes him an audience favourite from the start. Their demeanours transform from that of sneering pomposity to tormented acknowledgement as Inspector Goole forces the wealthy and selfish Birling family and Gerald to accept, one by one, their blame in the working-class girl’s suicide.
Goole’s warning about responsibility and ‘fire and blood and anguish’ is addressed with fixed intensity to the audience. I have not been to a play where the magnitude of the thrills has matched Daldry’s and the fact that it is so resonant, twenty five years on, is a testimony to the play and a condemnation to society. It is little wonder it is the longest running revival of a play in history.
The production is touring the UK until May 2012.
