Spectacularly staged: An Inspector Calls

It was a smashing performance, in more ways than one.  When the house on the set of An Inspector Calls came crashing down on the stage at London’s Novello Theatre, the audience might have jumped a little but the point had certainly been made.

Seventeen years after he staged it to great acclaim at the National Theatre, director Stephen Daldry has used JB Priestley’s classic play just as effectively to make a damning statement about greed and hypocrisy in the age of Britain’s parliamentary expenses scandal.

Priestley, known for his left-leaning convictions, wrote the play in 1945 as Britain was turning over to a Labour government and the welfare state was being developed.  Mirroring the opulence and injustice of society at the time, it works just as well as a comment on the inequalities of the 21^st century world and the sordid nature of modern politics.

The drama centres around the visit of a mysterious ‘inspector’ to a wealthy family in the Britain of 1912, as they are celebrating an engagement at a champagne-soaked dinner party.  As the evening progresses, the inspector’s investigations reveal how each family member has been complicit in the tragic suicide of an impoverished young girl.

Daldry, known for the politically-charged Billy Elliot, caricatures the family’s lavish lifestyle against their apparent disregard for those who suffer as a consequence, whether the factory worker lacking a livable wage, or the pretty girl left pregnant by a man greasy with entitlement.  The curtains open and we see how blind upstairs is to the fate of downstairs; from their cocooned domestic surroundings they do not even register the street urchins wandering the darkly lit streets below.

But as the inspector pries, the cocoon shatters and the illusion is broken.  The spectre of war haunts in the distance, the implication being that such a world is not only reprehensible but also fundamentally unsustainable.

Intentional or not, Daldry’s staging resonates well in a post-expenses scandal Britain.  When Gerald, Sheila’s fiancé, finds a loophole devolving responsibility away from the family, the house is restored to order.  Through Sheila’s outrage, we see a critique of a world where guilt is not a moral absolute, but dependant on consequence.

Like the MPs who fiddled their second home claims and only admitted their wrongdoings once their (good?) names were sullied, the concern is for the scandal and not the sin.

Nicholas Woodeson as the Inspector

The problem is of course is that, despite the Inspector’s impassioned plea at the play’s dénouement, although rocked at its foundations, as the curtains fall the house is still standing.

Sheila, representative of the new generation, has learnt her lesson, but not all of the younger characters have.  Mr.and Mrs Birling are resolutely stuck to their privileged place in the world.  Daldry builds the play up as a virulent condemnation, but, constrained by Priestley’s script, perhaps by reality itself, he offers no solution to the cycle.

History manifestly does repeat itself and the lessons of the past are not learnt.  The war that Priestley was foreshadowing may have been fought in the trenches of Flanders, but it could easily be that in Afghanistan.  The non-unionised workers of 1912 are the ones suffering at the hands of the greedy capitalist in 1912, today they can be substituted for the sweatshop worker.

The very fact that this is a re-staging is troubling; nearly two decades on and the criticisms of society still apply.

It is a beautiful staging; Daldry has attended to every detail, from the gradual staining of Sheila’s dress as the dirty truth about her willful bullying of Eva/Daisy emerges, to Mrs Birling’s grotesque way of clutching her jewels even as she tells of how she rejected the girl’s plea for charity.  Arthur Birling’s pretences of grandeur are made a mockery of when juxtaposed with his uncouth accent and his loutish son.

With a fantastic set used to full effect, demonic lighting and raging music to highlight the tension and a superb cast, particularly Nicholas Woodeson’s mischievous Inspector, Daldry’s interpretation is a resounding success.  After three acts and no interval, it is a rare production that doesn’t leave you just wanting a break.

If Daldry stages this in another seventeen years, what will his message be then?  No doubt the expenses scandal will have faded into obscurity, just as the issue he was allegedly critiquing in 1992, Margaret Thatcher’s denial of society, is largely textbook fodder for politics students today.

But whatever it is, one imagines Daldry will have no trouble finding a resonant message for the dinner guests at the Birling household to digest.

Until November 14th.

www.novellotheatre.com