An Inspector Calls - Royal National Theatre Revival

Royal National Theatre Revival

The play was successfully revived by English director Stephen Daldry for the National Theatre's Lyttelton Theatre on 11 September 1992 and later transferred to the Aldwych Theatre on 25 August 1993 and then to the Garrick Theatre on 24 October 1995. The original production featured Kenneth Cranham as Inspector Goole (later played by Barry Foster and Philip Whitchurch), Richard Pasco as Arthur Birling (later played by Julian Glover, Edward Peel and William Gaunt), Barbara Leigh Hunt as Sybil Birling (later played by Judy Parfitt, Margaret Tyzack and Marjorie Yates), Diana Kent as Sheila Birling (later played by Sylvestra Le Touzel) and Louis Hillyer as Gerald Croft. Daldrey's production was transferred to Broadway in 1994, where it ran at New York City's Royale Theatre from 27 April to 28 May 1995. Kenneth Cranham recreated his role as Inspector Goole with Philip Bosco as Arthur Birling and Rosemary Harris (later Siân Phillips) as Sybil Birling. It won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Revival of a Play.

Daldry’s production (with set design by Ian McNeil) was notable for employing non-naturalistic staging, set design, lighting and musical composition, drawing heavily from Expressionism as well as cinematic styles of film noir and horror films. Advertisements for the production featured the Inspector, standing in half shadow lit by a street lamp, recalling the image of Max von Sydow in the film The Exorcist. Daldry and McNeil researched early productions of the play (including the Moscow première) that featured minimalist, non-naturalistic set and lighting design. McNeil's set “divides” the stage into three time zones, reflecting Priestley’s own presentation of multiple time zones in his other plays such as Time and the Conways. The set of the Birling’s house represents the time zone of the play in early 1912; the front of the stage, featuring warped floor boards, a red telephone box and street children listening to a wireless, represented London in middle of World War II, when Priestley wrote the play; and Goole’s final speech is delivered directly to the audience, with the house lights turned up so that the audience are visible, representing the present day.

The set of the Birling’s house is raised on stilts and built in non-realistic, almost cartoonish – doors are deliberately low so that the actors have to stoop to walk in and out, and windows are high above door frames, through which characters sometimes pop out like dolls. The walls of the house open like a doll’s house, emphasising that the Birlings family live in a cloistered fantasy world. The house is raised above the stage on stilts, physically looking down on a cobblestoned area lit with a street lamp.

Daldry’s production and staging placed considerable emphasis on the Birling house as a site of social exclusion, and places a number of additional characters on stage who represent those who are excluded from the Birling’s world. As the play begins, the Birlings are inside their house, visible only slightly through the windows. Our attention is drawn instead to the back of the house and the cobblestoned area, where three young children in WWII dress are scavenging through food scraps thrown by Edna, the Birling’s elderly (and voiceless) maidservant. The children interact freely with Goole and Edna, but are only occasionally seen by the Birlings themselves, who inevitably become disturbed by their presence and look away or else ignore them. Edna appears to share a sense of complicity with Goole, inviting him closer to the house and smiling occasionally when the secrets of the family are revealed, but she makes no comment on the action.

Crucially, the Birlings must descend from the safety and opulence of their brightly lit Edwardian drawing room and into the dimly lit cobblestoned area to engage with Goole and confess their actions. Towards the end of the play, a crowd of men women and children appear en masse, as the Birlings are judged and accused by Goole. Though their presence is never explained, these silent nameless characters have been interpreted variously as being a Greek chorus, a jury or a lynch mob, all standing in silent judgment of the Birlings and representing the powerless working class masses that are excluded from and exploited by the Birling’s lives and working practices.

The dramatic conflict is heightened by film noir-inspired lighting and smoke, a dissonant string orchestra score that is reminiscent of movie scores for horror films (including Bernard Hermann’s scores for Alfred Hitchcock films), and the house itself, which acts as a character in the story, apparently reacting to the family’s crisis. After the revelations of Goole’s visit, the house is tipped forward and half-falls into a ravine in the stage floor, its contents shattering and exploding all over the stage, leaving the Birlings to walk through the wreckage of their home. When Gerald proposes that Goole’s interrogation has no basis in evidence and that there is no dead woman in the infirmary, the house moves up and rights itself, suggesting the revival of the family's fortunes and their ability to withdraw from the world again.

The dynamic staging was considered to be a radical break with previous UK stagings of the play (which usually adhered to a single realistically depicted Edwardian drawing room set and a static dialogue-based performance style) and emphasized the metaphorical elements of the “inspection” and the themes of social exclusion and class warfare. Many theatre critics in 1992 read the production as a critic of Thatcherite Conservative politics, with Goole’s final speech reading as a direct rebuttal of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s well-known statement “There is no such thing as society”.

Daldry’s production was widely praised for re-invigorating the play for a new generation of theatregoers, and for making the play involving and politically relevant for a modern audience. The production is often credited with single-handedly rediscovering Priestley’s works and “rescuing” him from the reputation of being obsolete and class-bound. The success of the production since 1992 has led to a critical reappraisal of Priestley as a politically engaged playwright who offered a sustained critique of the hypocrisy of English society.

Daldry's production was revived in London at the Novello Theatre in September 2009 with a new cast, though retaining McNeil's original sets and staging. The Royal National Theatre also staged a successful revival of Priestley's Time and the Conways in 2009.

The production established Daldry's reputation as a leading stage director. Following the success of the production, Daldry became Artistic Director of the Royal Court Theatre in London from 1992–98, where he headed the theatre's £26 million development scheme. He went on to a successful career as a film director, winning international success and critical acclaim for his films Billy Elliot, The Hours and The Reader, all of which won him Academy Award nominations for best director.

Daldry's production was revived at the Novello Theatre in London for an eight-week run from September 25, 2009 (following previews from September 22) through November 14, 2009 and, according to Playbill.com, will transfer to Wyndham's Theatre on December 3 for a run through March 20, 2010. Daldry returned to re-direct the production and casting includes Nicholas Woodeson returning to the role of Inspector Goole (he previously took over that role from Kenneth Cranham during the same production's Broadway run in 1994) and David Roper as Arthur Birling, Sandra Duncan as Sybil Birling, Marianne Oldham as Sheila Birling, Robin Whiting as Eric Birling, Timothy Watson as Gerald Croft and Diana Payne Myers as Edna.