Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Liam Brennan, Christine Kavanagh, Jeffrey Harmer, Alasdair Buchan, Chloe Orrock, Ryan Saunders, Emma Cater, Michael Ross, Portia Booroff, Elissa Churchill, Jonathan Davenport, Nathanial Cagliarini, Ella-Grace Hanson, Daniel Dean.
Time never changes, it just alters the angle in which you stare at it, until finally you realise that what has already gone, has returned, and normally with even greater ferocity and fire than before.
Time is such that it resonates throughout the ages, and theatre, being the perfect conduit for the way it reminds us of the lessons we seem to forget that we were shown and asked to learn, will hold each person accountable for their choices, and if we offer our neighbour help, if we show compassion, then unlike any other medium, the glow of responsibility can be seen to have heard the warnings and acted upon them.
The scathing alarms once chimed at the hypocrisy of the Victorian and Edwardian society, now in the 21st Century return with greater anger and for arguably many happy to ignore the plight of the poor, the so called feckless of society, for those that have to rely on foodbanks, on charity, on robbing Peter to keep Paul from threating to evict them, then An Inspector Calls remains deeply engrained as a production that will bite down hard on the way we sabotage and drain the life from the working class.
Community is everything, we look after the sick by the grace of our souls knowing that one day we could be in just as much pain as them, we help those in need of assistance because we ourselves are only ever three pay packets away from being destitute and if you can walk on by the children asking to be educated and not care that their classrooms are overcrowded, that some may not have eaten properly in days and that homeless situation in the country, in your city, on your street, has reached epidemic proportions, then you are the ones that Inspector Goole is reaching out to. In Stephen Daldry’s now classic interpretation of J.B. Priestley’s seminal work, Time has once again altered the angle in which we notice its hands moving.
With a set that matches the unnerving pulse of the play and with defining performances from Liam Brennan as Inspector Goole and Jeffrey Harmer as the patriarch of the Birling family to whom the whole structure of Edwardian life is built around, An Inspector Calls not only reminds us that today’s society is on the verge of being as judged as hypocritical as that of the Victorian era but is in danger of accepting the traits of Fascist control as an everyday occurrence.
A play that never fails to remind us just how sensitive Time is to inaction and to the fears of all.
Ian D. Hall