Tim Treloar as Inspector Goole and Alice Darling as Edna with Jackie Morrison as Sybil vanishing into the Birling mansion. Pictures: Mark Douet

An Inspector Calls

Wolverhampton Grand

****

Two classics for the price  of one with J B Priestley’s 1945 celebrated time shifting thriller with its powerful social commentary and Stephen Daldry's wonderful National Theatre revival with its fascinating and innovative staging which premiered in 1992 and even now, 33 years on, makes an 80-year-old play resonate with a contemporary audience.

It is all aided by Ian MacNeil’s set, a visual metaphor for the thrust of Priestley’s narrative. The stage is dominated by a towering house, perched on stilts, precariously unstable and unbalanced which is revealed to be a sort of Wendy house – home to the morally questionable Birling family who are far too big and important to fit comfortably inside a mere common dwelling.

The facade opens out like a doll's house to reveal a dining room with the action spreading to the cobbled streets outside.

We open with children playing with an old radio stirring it into life to give the sort of sweeping symphonic score beloved by 1940’s cinema dramas, the curtain rising slowly to reveal the mist and drizzle drenched house with real rain pouring down from the flies.

We join the Birlings, giants in their small world, at an engagement party with Gerald, the son of Sir George and Lady Croft, owners of the Birling’s commercial rivals, due to marry daughter Sheila Birling and thus create an industrial dynasty in the fictional Midland’s town of  Brumley.

The celebrations are interrupted by the arrival of an inspector who has questions about a young girl who has just suffered an agonising death after committing suicide by drinking disinfectant. His arrival is announced by the maid, Edna, played by Alice Darling.

Edna says little, she is from the same sort of background and class as the dead girl, Eva Smith, and is hardly noticed or acknowledged by the Birling family, she is just expected to know her place, be there when needed and invisible the rest of the time. Their own, personal Eva.

Jackie Morrison as Mrs Birling, left, Alice Darling  as Edna, Jeffrey Harmer as Mr Birling and Leona Allen as Sheila Birling.

Tim Treloar is a fearsome Inspector Goole. He is quietly commanding and you can feel a suppressed rage and even a hint of mockery as he slowly extracts information out of the Birlings and Gerald, word by word, confession by confession. Each questioned in turn as dealing with more than one at a time would result in a muddle he tells us in his Welsh accent.

Priestley’s theme here is that the girl’s death is caused by not one, isolated and devastating incident but a series of interlinked events that become cumulatively fatal. The Birlings each have their individual part to play, but in reality are composites of Priestley’s view of society.

The patriarch is Arthur, played by Jeffrey Harmer. He is craving a knighthood and taking pride in being a ruthless captain of industry. full of arrogance and self-importance, and with no moral compass. He denies even the slightest responsibility for Eva’s death despite being the original catalyst of her downfall when he sacked her for the despicable crime of asking for a pay rise.

He was not best pleased when his son, Eric, pointed out that it was no different to his father trying the extract the highest price he could for his products.

Arthur’s only concern seemed to be ensuring Eva’s death didn't affect his knighthood chance nor the impending wedding, which, you suspect, he saw more as a business transaction than a romance.

He’s an alderman, was Mayor two years ago, and plays golf with the chief constable, a triumvirate of privilege he waves as a free pass.

Next under the Goole gaze was Leona Allen’s Sheila who had Eva sacked in her next job as a shop girl in a fit of pique. She was just collateral damage amid Sheila’s other frustrations. At least Sheila had regrets and felt some responsibility.

Then there was Tom Chapman’s Gerald, a willing supporter of his future father-in-law and his capitalist ideals. Yet he at least showed some empathy and compassion, even affection . . . and,  more, for Eva, who became his mistress and who then called herself Daisy Renton. The confession was to end his engagement but, for a while at least, his honesty did earn him Shelia’s respect.

Sybil Birling, Arthur’s harridan of a wife is next in Goole’s sights and what a fabulous Lady Bracknell Jackie Morrison would make. Her Sybil sees herself as socially and morally in a much higher sphere than a mere police inspector and she finds his questioning both impertinent and offensive, She chaired the meeting of a charity that helped women in difficulty and to her the unmarried and now pregnant Eva, and all her type, were immoral, undeserving of help and dishonest. She had no regrets and even took some sort of pride in having turned her down for any help two weeks before her death.

George Rowlands as Eric Birling with Arthur, Edna, the children and 12 silent watchers in the background

She despises the girl for her immorality and as she declares it is the father who is at fault and he should be named, shamed and punished, a crowd silently appears in the background, 12 people, like a silent jury, standing in judgment along with Edna and the street urchins children playing on the cobbles outside.

Then finally there is George Rowlands as Arthur’s son Eric, a son with a drink problem who had forced himself on Eva, but like his older sister was full of remorse and accepted his responsibility in Eva’s death without reservation. Full of regret he had even stolen from the firm to try to help her. She had turned the stolen money down.

Eva’s journey from sacking to death was now told so it meant Goole’s job was done and as he leaves he makes his final pitch declaring that every life is interconnected and we either look after each other or the human race was doomed.

It leaves Arthur more concerned about the stolen money, £50, worth around £5,000 today, and his reputation, while a distraught Eric is accusing his mother of killing both his child and her own grandchild.

Left alone the Birlings assess not their part in Eva’s death but how to negate the publicity, looking for ways out, Gerald, might have shown compassion for the dead girl, but his survival instinct expounded a theory that it was not the same girl in each case, she had not changed her name, everyone had been told of a different girl and she wasn’t dead at all.

Everyone was in the clear, the inspector was a hoax . . . even Sheila was starting to believe, with Eric, the jack the lad son, the only one unconvinced. That is until the phone rang . . . and, well sometimes the past is merely the future arriving early . . . the call was the past turning into the future.

Bradford born Priestly was a staunch socialist, his mother was a mill girl, and the play can be seen as a parable, the Birlings representing capitalism and Eva was a composite of the working class – it is a theme that has seen Priestley regarded as an English Ibsen, using characters in a drama to represent society’s ills and failings.

It could, at a pinch, be considered a ghost story, we never did discover if the inspector existed at all. Was he merely the conscience of Gerald and the Birlings? Eva’s spiritual advocate even? Or was he the future arriving in the past with his real arrival about to come?

Any explanation seems outlandish but Priestly had his own theories on time, perhaps not as scientific as Einstein’s, but theories none the less, one being that time was not linear but past, present and future could co-exist, all at the same time, another that time could repeat itself with different outcomes.

Perhaps Priestley’s theories that time is flexible could explain the red telephone box, such a dramatic and telling item of the production. The play is set in 1912 . . . as for the red telephone box . . . Sir Giles Gilbert Scott’s K2 red telephone box did not appear on the streets until 1926. The future finding its way into the past perhaps?|Priestley would no doubt have been delighted.

An Inspector Calls is a regular set text for GCSE and it is easy to see why with its societal inequities and dilemmas and reflection of the world we live in. It is thought provoking and open to many interpretations and discussions which is a testament to Priestley’s writing and Daldry’s stunning vision and, finally, just a small point . . .

The Grand was packed with school pupils on Press night and their behaviour was exemplary. A credit to both teachers and schools.

Beautifully acted and full of drama and surprise on the brilliant set, the inspector will be calling in on the Birlings to 08-03-25. 

Roger Clarke

04-03-25

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