How do you rework a classic? It’s a fine balancing act but, with great acting and staging that blows your mind, it’s more than possible, as MKFM’s Tom Johnston found out.
If you like ‘whodunnits’ you’re going to love this one. Inspector Goole arrives unexpectedly at the prosperous Birling family home in industrial Brumley and interrupts their peaceful dinner party. He’s looking into the death of a young woman who has killed herself with poison. But who’s responsible for the girl’s demise?
What follows is more than a simple detective case with potential culprits coming in and out of the story. This one delves deeper and, with JB Priestley’s usual story-telling skill, unravels secret after secret. Everyone seems to have known the girl, and all have a chilling tale to tell.
But the underlying theme is one of social class. The haves and the have-nots, the privileged and the poor, the aristocrats and the destitute. Someone with too much port and too many cigars and another with no home and little food. It’s a Priestley thought provoker that has you feeling just as guilty as the characters up on stage.
As sets go, this one is right up there – literally. The Birling house is cleverly designed and perched high up on a stilt-like structure. It allows the rest of the MK Theatre stage to be used, with shadow and clever lighting, to give proceedings a dark and stormy feel. One of real tension and mystery.
The dwelling opens and closes like a dolls house which allows us, the audience, to observe goings-on within it.
Inspector Goole (or should that be ‘ghoul’?) speaks mainly from across the stage so you can distinguish between his mysterious presence and the Birling family’s turmoil and guilt. Tim Treloar’s Inspector masterfully brings out the best of the other characters with his quiet quizzing, thoughtful considerations and withering looks.
There’s light and shade everywhere, and not just in the story-telling – designer Ian MacNeil’s stage is variously lit with sparks, drenched with (real) rain and clouded by swirling fog and mist. It’s an all-consuming experience, helped by Oscar-winning Stephen Warbeck’s musical score, that adds to the delight of the evening. Director Stephen Daldry must have been delighted with the outcome.
And, of course, the tale is a gripping and powerful one, flirting with different time periods as the plot unravels (it’s said that Priestley had a theory on parallel lives in parallel time zones).
So, who did do it? And who is the strange Goole? You’ll have to go to the theatre yourself and let the Inspector reveal all…
An Inspector Calls is at Milton Keynes Theatre until Saturday 24th May.
