Scott Purvis-Armour reviews the latest Scottish performance of the long-touring classic.
With brandy on its breath and weighed down with the expensive tulle of a world haunted by prophesies of war, J.B. Priestley’s An Inspector Calls is perhaps more eerily prescient today than when it was renovated and revived at the National Theatre in 1992 - this intriguing mystery of corruption in political office, the exploitation of the working classes and the power of profit might have a relevance today that should have voters looking to their pay-packets, and their ballot boxes.
The tense 1946 play follows the unexpected arrival of one Inspector Goole to the drawing room of the socially and economically prosperous Birling dynasty - revealing that one of their young female workers has completed suicide, the policeman accuses how each of the family members twisted a knife in her sad downfall, drawing the superficial and supercilious lives of the upper-classes with touches of humour, pathos and morality.
Billy Elliott director Stephen Daldry - who saved the play from the am-dram productions with which it had become notorious - makes the set the star of the show. Ian MacNeil’s excellent design unfolds like a doll’s house in an Edwardian child’s room, immersing the audience in the cobbled streets and silver cutlery of the Birling’s sordid society - the set mirrors the chintz of their social masks alongside the grime of their secrecy with a smirk.
Sebastian Frost’s exceptionally atmospheric sound design, too, gives the piece the iron-taste of a Hitchcock classic - it clashes Stephen Warbeck’s knife-wound violin compositions with the sturm und drang funeral marches of his mournful piano. The result is a piece of melodrama with a set that arrives with all the gravitas of an exorcist on Halloween, dispatching the ghosts of their pasts on an Ouija board bought from Harrods.
It’s a pity - perhaps - that’s Priestley’s written script doesn’t match the severity of the staging. The inspector’s investigation is duly functional, revealing one more exhibit in the case every ten minutes or so and dutifully processing them like a custody officer. The language is orderly, with only a few moments putting style above suspense, although the characterisation is entertaining.
The cast deliver the script with some vaudeville villainy. Tim Treloar is commanding as Inspector Goole, an avenging angel of the working classes, and Jackie Morrison finds fantastic sy-ll-a-bi-fi-ca-tion as the matriarch of the Birlings.
With such darkly drawn characters - squabbling over profit and engagement rings - it’s perhaps difficult to see the crimes of the upper-classes with much nuance. When their remorse comes, it is dealt with in screams but is short-lived, and they slither back in their ivory towers, vindicated until they’re not.
Perhaps this 1946 parody is beyond our understanding in a world where tech billionaires sit, unelected, over our lives. The fear that these oligarchs will wave sceptres over our rights, our homes and our politics, forever and ever, is the greatest fear of all, and that is Priestley’s gift to theatre forever.
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An Inspector Calls performs at the Kings Theatre in Glasgow until April 4, 2025. It then continues its UK tour. For further details, go to the production’s website.
Photo by Tristram Kenton.
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