Electrifying !!! (An Inspector Calls)

Member Name: Pinotage

Product:	An Inspector Calls
Date:	18/04/01 (3820 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Incredible set - electrifying production

Disadvantages: speech at beginning muffled by house

Electric! My son is studying the play at school so I was dragged along. I'd seen it once before many years ago. It's a favourite of am-dram groups because all it needs is one dining room set. I remembered it as slow and talky.

Well, not this production! Even before the play starts we know something is strange. The edge of the stage visible infront of the curtain is bent and twisted. As the house lights dim the wailing of a second world war 'all clear' air raid siren sounds.

A flap opens in the stage and out climb some young children holding a torch. It must be after an air-raid. But everything is weird. A wet cobbled road surface is distorted and it seems a house has been thrust up through it, it sits uneasily on pylons raised in the sky. The children wonder at it, then run and play. It's some sort of time slip. The house lights come on and people can be seen and heard through the windows. We are outside observers, looking back at a family in 1912. They are celebrating the engagement of their daughter to a young business man. The family is rich, the father is a factory owner. They discuss how life is becoming better through modern marvels, for instance the Titanic is setting sail soon, and dismiss nonsense talked about Germany arming. But most of all they scoff at talk of society, and that people should help each other. Its do- gooding socialist nonsense, they declare.

Meanwhile their maid is swilling rubbish into the gutter where one of the young children sits, staring up at the house. He will remain there the entire time, and observer.

A figure swathed in overcoat and wide brimmed hat appears in the street. He demands to speak with the householder. The factory owner is not at all concerned that the visitor is a police inspector. After all, he is friends with the chief constable and was mayor of the city for several years, and as a magistrate has sometimes to sign warrants. He knows the police officers in t
he town, but he doesn't recognise this one. The inspector doesn't want a warrant. He is investigating the suicide of a young girl. And it seems she once worked at the factory.

Why should that concern the factory owner. After all, he sacked her eighteen months before because she was involved in a strike for more money. The inspector seems to already know about that. And more. And he has to interview all the occupants about their knowledge of the dead girl.

They all have had some connection, and the inspector seems to consider they all played some part in the girls death. One by one he questions them, exposing things they'd rather not be brought into the open. And life will never be the same again for some of them.

But is he really a police inspector?

This production is electrifying, stunning. There is no other word for it. Real water falls from the sky when it rains, the collapse of the family is echoed by the house crashing down, spraying the table settings all over the street so conversations are accompanied by the sound of feet crunching over broken crockery.

The play has been opened up, and opened also to echos of the future, the children and people who inherit the world left by the factory owner and his kind are there - mutely observing.

J B Priestley wrote a passionate play, intended to influence thinking. He wanted it to be set in one room to reduce distractions and force concentration on the script. But audiences have changed in the past fifty years, and this production catches the pulse, bring bang up to date the plays meaning while exciting audiences.

While the run at the current theatre has ended the play will be returning to a new theatre at the end of the summer. Make sure you catch this production!

Is he a real police inspector? My son suggested I consider his name............

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