The proscenium stage has a romance of its own. You, the spectator, is actually a Peeping Tom, staring into the lives of total strangers through the invisible fourth wall. And what lives! For on the stage, time and space are usually compressed or telescoped according to the whims and fancies of the playwright. Passions are exaggerated on purpose, and action proceeds at an unbelievable pace; all the while retaining the semblance of normality (this is not essential for an arena stage, where the unreality of the situation is accepted by the audience from the start). The denouement is usually explosive, and you leave the theatre emotionally drained.J. B. Priestley’s An Inspector Calls uses the advantages (and limitations) of the proscenium stage to the maximum extent possible: to produce a play which is a very good mystery (in the Agatha Christie tradition), a social statement (very much like Ibsen) and a final twist which takes it into the realm of fantasy. I read the play, then watched the BBC adaptation… you have to see it performed to appreciate the power packed into ninety minutes of stage-time.(view spoiler)[The Birlings (the industrialist Arthur Birling, his wife Sybil, daughter Sheila and son Eric) are having a quiet little dinner at their home to celebrate Sheila’s engagement to Gerald Croft, son of Sir George and Lady Croft. Gerald is also present. For Arthur Birling, the occasion is doubly joyful, as Birling and Company are the less powerful competitors of Crofts Limited, and the marriage will mean a profitable business deal as well as a social coup d’état. It is the pre-World War I era, and Birling is acutely consciousness of his social backwardness-something he is trying hard to rectify through his financial and political clout. He has been rather successful as he hints to Gerald, because a knighthood is on the way.Into this haven of bourgeois comfort and security walks in Inspector Goole, unannounced, and goes about destroying it piece by piece. He is apparently there to conduct an enquiry into the suicide of a girl, Eva Smith, who has been admitted into the infirmary after drinking disinfectant. According to the inspector, the Birlings have a hand in the girl’s death. Initially Birling is haughty and superior; being still “on the bench” and a friend of Chief Constable Colonel Roberts, he can afford to be short with a mere inspector. Goole, however, goes about his business ruthlessly and ultimately succeeds in grinding them down, one by one.It comes out that the girl has been mistreated by all of them. Birling initially fired her from his factory for organising a strike; Sheila got her dismissed from her subsequent job at a dress shop out of pure jealousy and Gerald “kept” her for a year at a friend’s flat, after picking her up from a bar which she was frequenting in her desperation. This last revelation leads to Sheila breaking off her engagement, and Gerald goes out to be alone for a while. But the Birling’s evening of woe is far from over.Inspector Goole establishes that a couple of weeks before, Eva Smith had approached Mrs. Birling in her capacity of the chairman of a charitable society. She was pregnant and in desperate need of assistance. Initially she had lied that she was a married woman and that her name was Birling (!); however, the truth soon came out that the baby was out of wedlock. Eva did not want to approach her lover because he was an immature boy who is an alcoholic and had stolen money to support her. Mrs. Birling, however, was adamant that the baby’s father must be made solely responsible, and succeeded to influence the society to turn her out without a penny.However much the inspector bullies her, Mrs. Birling is adamant – now that the woman has committed suicide, her lover must be dealt with very severely. Then Goole drops his final bomb: the culprit is none other than Eric, her son, an accusation which the young man accepts. He also admits stealing money from his father’s firm.The family is in a total shambles now: a son who has committed adultery and theft, a daughter whose engagement has ended the same day it started and a father in the hope of a knighthood, faced with public scandal and disgrace. Eric is almost ready to murder his mother, because as he says, she is “responsible for the death of her own grandchild”. It is at this point that the inspector begins to behave very peculiarly. After rubbing in the fact that they all have got blood on their hands, he makes this speech and leaves.One Eva Smith has gone… but there are millions and millions of Eva Smiths and John Smiths still left with us, with their lives, their hopes and fears, their suffering and chance of happiness, all intertwined with our lives, with what we think and say and do. We don’t live alone. We are members of one body. We are responsible for each other. And I tell you that the time will soon come when if men do not learn that lesson, then they will be taught it in fire and blood and anguish. We don’t live alone. Good night.It is into the situation that Gerald comes back, and he comes with some welcome information – he has just confirmed that there is no Inspector Goole in the police department! With cold logic, he establishes that they have no reason to believe that the girl in each of the incidents mentioned by Goole is the same one – true, he produced a photograph, but it was shown to each of them individually. The hoax is confirmed when they call the infirmary and confirm that there has been no suicide that night.It is time for a pat on the back for Gerald, a sigh of relief from Mrs. And Mr. Birling, and a jolly round of drinks. Sheila and Eric, though initially reluctant to return to “normalcy” are on the way to being persuaded when the phone rings.It is from the infirmary. A girl has just died on the way there after drinking disinfectant, and a policeman is on the way to question them… and the curtain descends. (hide spoiler)]
Includes spoilers.This is such an awful play. I'm going to try and make something coherent out of this rant, and I'm sorry if it's long-winded, but I guarantee you that it will be more interesting than the entirety of all three acts. Ok, so let's start.The play opens up in an upper class English household in 1912. Just in case you couldn't tell, Priestly drops hints about it for the entire scene, including references to the titanic - which, incidentally, hasn't sunk yet - of course, Birling still knows enough detail about it to grace his family with, and a reference to the great war leaves a sort of horrendously botched attempt at exposition (trust me, I'm only just getting started). Both the titanic and the war are then dismissed by Birling, just in case we can't see Priestly's plastering of his overstated character. It's so lazy and unsubtle, like, are you even trying here? Did you even think about what Birling was going to say before you opened his mouth?Blah blah blah, everyone is a caricature of themselves, it's obvious the fiance is cheating on Shelia from page 3, then after all this bumbling around with the characters saying nothing useful to the plot at all, the inspector arrives.Couldn't the play just have started here?Blah blah blah, more exposition, the young female character is the reasonably morally apt family member and yet still manages to be the most un-feminist character ever - and then we finally start getting into the actual story. And let me be perfectly clear when I say that Priestly holds back nothing. You won't miss ANYTHING about the plot, but you also won't find it out on your own. It'll just be presented to you, straight up and down style. And then we have Eric, who started out as the only reasonably amusing character and turned out to be a rapist. Good one, Priestly. Try on all the cliches you want.Also: Why do all the characters react the same way to Eva's death? Why is no-one concerned at the end by the strange and completely unexplained inspector's appearance in the first place? Really? Probably because, like everything else in the play, Priestly only thought about it for around thirty seconds without considering development, much like the entire plot layout or any of the characters.Practically, it's pretty badly set out, too. Priestly obviously has never studied the work of Chekhov, otherwise he would know that if you have to tell the audience how a character says a line, the line isn't good enough. I mean, come on! Really!My question is: What is the point of this play? Is there any conclusion reached that we couldn't have gleamed from the first one-dimensional rant from Birling about how great capitalism is? *chortle chortle* Like, we all feel the same way about the characters. We all disagree with their stance on life (which is never even vaguely concealed at all), so unless they were going to do something dramatic, why have the play take place at all? *sips drink*In conclusion: This play is really bad. Priestly seems to write with a paint-roller- indelicately, and probably should have thought the play through before just throwing all of it over the page. Don't read this play. If you value good characters, a well developed plot and some semblance of closure or well timed endings to your literature, just avoid this play. Don't waste your life on it. I feel for the poor souls who have to study this pile of poop at GCSE or A-Level, I really do.
What do You think about An Inspector Calls (1987)?
Searching desperately for a fall play to direct, I was handed this brilliant bit of writing, and fell hard and fast.It's like when you first see a television show that immediatly hooks you. Taut, concise writing that holds you in the moment and a twisting plot line that leaves you guessing until the very end.It's shocking that this book is largely ignored by Americans (witness the fact that only a few more than 50 people have reviewed it here on "goodreads"). Perhaps the setting and tone lend it to commonwealth readers more than we ex-colonials. But the themes of hubris, responsibility and the place of the individual within society are critical to modern Americans, just as they were to postwar Brits, just as they were to the aristocracy at the beginning of the 20th century.Directing the recent production gave me great respect for Priestly, the humor, the sincerity, the ingeneous weaving of story lines held me, an international cast, and a pack of high school students who actually stormed into the final showing (some to watch it for a third time). Would that it was all my doing...it was Priestly's I just went along for the ride.
—MacK
An Inspector Calls is a memorable play from the mid-1940's, written by the popular English dramatist J. B. Priestley. Partly both philosophical and psychological, partly a moral fable, it is one of Priestley's best known works for the stage. It deals with issues of exploitation, abandonment and social ruin, within the framework of a detective mystery. And just to add a little more spice, it also has hints of the supernatural. However it is firmly rooted in the English society life of the time, and thus is now considered to be a classic of "drawing room" theatre. The text is often studied in English schools as part of the English Literature GCSE examination. Additionally there has been a successful revival in live theatre productions in recent years, despite the fact that the play does feel heavily dated.The play takes place on a single night in 1912, slightly before the First World War, and focuses on the prosperous middle-class Birling family, who live in a comfortable home in Brumley, "an industrial city in the north Midlands". There are three acts, all of which are clearly marked with directions for the set and staging, which J. B.Priestley felt could be contained within one set, with differently lighted areas. Interestingly, he states,"The lighting should be pink and intimate until the INSPECTOR arrives, and then it should be brighter and harder". Examples such as this one show that the author deliberately influenced the audiences' perceptions about this character right from the start, in a subtly low-key way. Additionally Priestley is very clear about the physical attributes of his characters and their demeanour, to similar effect. He leaves nothing to chance.A key character in the play, and one who controls and manipulates the action, is the inspector of the title, Inspector Goole. (view spoiler)[His name is a wry joke, an indication of the supernatural element of the play. (hide spoiler)]
—Jean
I love this play, I have seen it perfromed and been in it myself. It's a brilliant study of the potential of human cruelty, and how we often don't think how are actions affect others in the long term.Something that seems small or trivial to us can actually impact heavily and negatively on other people.It has great twists and turns, and definately keeps you guessing all the way through, although I would say it's probably far better to try and see it performed rather than read it, as I think it comes alive and has a far greater impact on stage than it does on the page.
—Ellie
