King’s Theatre, Glasgow
Five stars
The sirens that usher in this latest revival of Stephen Daldry’s epoch making reimagining of J.B. Priestley’s drawing room skewering of the monied classes speaks volumes about what follows. Written at the end of the Second World War and set two years before the First, Priestley’s play took the whodunnit formula and gave it a social conscience that Daldry’s production explodes into view.
At the heart of this is Inspector Goole, who gatecrashes the fancy dinner held by factory owning industrialist Arthur Birling to celebrate his daughter Sheila’s forthcoming nuptials with the equally well-heeled Gerald Croft. Birling’s feckless dipso son Eric is also in attendance, with queen bee Sybil set to make her entrance.
Goole arrives with news of the death of a young woman called Eva Smith. This may have been by her own hand, but as her assorted circumstances are laid bare, the Birlings appear to be complicit in her demise en masse. It isn’t just the family on trial, however, but an entire rotten system that saw her sacked for asking for a fair wage, refused welfare and thrown onto the scrap heap.
Priestley’s plot is damming enough of an elite who use privilege and politesse as weapons rather than tank battles. In Daldry and associate director Charlotte Peters’ hands, while the text is kept intact, the theatrical largesse at play transforms it into a seismic call for social change.
This is amplified by Ian MacNeil’s remarkable set, which puts the family home at its centre before their world comes crashing down around them. The dialogue is delivered with rapid-fire urgency by a cast led by Tim Treloar as Goole. This is heightened even more by the wilfully melodramatic orchestral blare of Stephen Warbeck’s score.
Entitlement abounds in Jeffrey Harmer’s portrayal of Arthur, as it does with Tom Chapman as Gerald and George Rowlands as Eric. Leona Allen makes a spoilt and spiteful as Sheila, while Jackie Morrison’s Sybil has the stridency of an iron lady in waiting. As an ensemble of onlookers become silent witnesses to the collapse, Alice Darling’s tireless maid Edna tidies up the mess.
Thirty-two years on from Daldry’s monumental reinvention of Priestley’s play, the sheer ghastliness of the Birlings as ciphers of selfishness and greed remains as grimly recognisable as the Eva Smiths of the world in a still startling piece of work.
The Herald, April 3rd 2025
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