An Inspector Calls!

Firstly, I didn't do the play at school, I think only the top set English class did it and I was disappointed when I wasn't allowed to go with them when they went to see it, the same thing happened when the drama class went to see The Mousetrap, that was a several years ago now and I'm finally getting to see both this year.

So, I thought Blood Brothers was the most nihilistic evening in the theatre but Stepehen Daldry's production of J.B Priestley's play certainly tops that, imagine if Willie Russell had written Downton Abbey! That was my idea of An Inspector Calls.
It's not exactly a straightforward play and it seems that there are different interpretations of it. It's part drawing-room thriller; Christie-style whodunnit, social morality play and class satire. Similarly the themes can also be down to individual interpretation, guilt, class divide, morality, socialism vs capitalism, even the pliability of youthful politics?; and I was left with questions, that was probably the point, who or what was the Inspector? I noticed the similarity between the name Goole and 'ghoul'.
As for the acting, every actor had the dramatic chops for their parts, but it's Tom Mannion's (familiar from regular TV appearances) Inspector as the lynchpin of the piece. Kelly Hotten and Henry Gilbett as the 'children' of the are the characters who change the most, spoilt and selfish to begin with they end up the characters the audience care about.
The set could be considered to be the other character, a Dali-esque dollhouse of a 'building' on stilts that means, if sitting in the stalls, you have to literally (but not socially) have to look up to the Birlings and they look down (literally and socially) on a cobbled street. The house plays it's part towards the end of the play when the Birlings situation dramatically alters. Although set in 1912 it occupies three time zones: 1945, when it was written (the street set and silent characters' wartime costumes) and the present (the Inspector's final speech to the audience, with the house lights up). With all that's going on socially, politically and economically in real life An Inspector Calls is just as relevant now as it was then (1912) and then (1945)!