‘An Inspector Calls’ is an open and vocal criticism of social values, and comment on social responsibility. You do not go to Priestley’s play expecting a laugh-along, and, quite true to form, this is not what you appear to be offered.
The play is allowed to speak for itself, as I am told, both in regards to the original idea (it still remains stalwartly focussed on human obligation), and in regards to the artistic side of the production. There is black tie a-plenty, evening dresses similarly, and a decanter full of port.
With regard to the artistic vision, the staging is very, well, ‘staged’. I say this not in a derogatory, or even negative way, simply as a way of conveying the picutre-like arrangement of characters which greets the eye. It looks as if a smocked artist, easel in tow, has set their models ready for the canvas.
This can, of course, lead to some problems, one such being that, on occasions, the scene is almost too picture-like – which can lead to its being a bit static. This is, in part, the fault of the script, which necessarily demands much of this static-action (if I may be oxymoronic) from many of the actors. Where two of the characters are conversing, three, four or five may be on stage, and so evolves the hard task of still capturing the building pace of the play, while remaining sedentary.
For the play is incremental. I saw as much with the juxtaposition of the amiable beginning of the ‘nice little family celebration’, against the hugely confrontational later scene from Act Three. At one point I even jumped, as things got so heated.
And the acting seems to generally gauge this building and brewing nature of the play. Those (such as Raphaelle Vallet’s Shirley Birling) who seem timid or at least unthreatening under the guise of the situation before the Inspector’s exposé begins, slowly transform as you approach the zenith of the emotional tensions that lie under the surface. Eric Birling (played, with notable versatility, by Felix Lehane) for example, begins as the ‘squiffy’, almost comic, member of the family, but shifts from this persona into a centre of morality and immorality, which seems to involve impressive amounts of shouting.
At this late stage in rehearsals, perhaps with a few moments of slightly jarring inertness, the show runs pleasantly along these bubbling undercurrents of tension, boiling over at the right points and simmering with equal aptness.
