15 February 2012 (Theatre Review)

Star Rating: 1/5

Venue: The Gaiety Theatre
Directed by: Stephen Daldrey
Written by: J.P. Priestly
Starring: Tom Mannion, Geoff Leesly,Kelly Hotten, Karen Archer, Henry Gilbert, John Sackville

The dangers of touring a production for too long are highlighted in this expressionist twist on J.B. Priestley's An Inspector Calls. First staged in 1992 and revived in 2009 it arrives in the Gaiety in 2012 with its original set (stunningly designed by Ian MacNeil) but minus any of its original players so that the brilliant aesthetic quickly devours the diluted characterisation before being crippled by it.

Blending the Edwardian look of the period it was set in with the shell like ruins of London during the blitz (when the play was written) it channels the music and motifs of the film maker Alfred Hitchcock to lend an air of nourish pulp fiction to the Agatha Christie plotting. Ornate red curtains draw back to reveal a celebratory dinner taking place behind the walls of a giant Wendy house, ominously perched on stilts and resembling the Bates Motel, though the horrors committed are by relics mummified by class and hardened to the hardship faced by the less privileged. A woman is dead, by her own hand, but the individual members of the Birling clan have each played a part in her destitution. Inspector Goole has arrived to help them connect the dots, to goad and eviscerate them till the walls split and the floor quite literally falls through, exposing them to each other and the influence their world has had on another. Haunted by a silent chorus of extras who look on from the past and the future director Stephen Daldrey connects the dots for us about the resilience of a class riddled society, a point not lost on an Irish audience taunted by recent boom and present bust.

It's a terrific concept, magnificently rendered in design but far from effective in performance. The shrieking turns lack the nuance needed to turn ones stomach but also remain human enough to allow the writers point across without making it seem didactic. A lot of the lines are dropped in the melee of barking emitted by the actors but worse is how little humour, heart or hope survives. Daldrey's fussy direction has gotten flabby since hitting the road and the actors seem regularly unsure as to what they are doing and why, particularly Karen Archer as Mrs Birling.

The failure across the board to vary the performances as Goole tightens the noose means it lacks the required suspense to charge the mystery and no longer entertained we are restrained from seeing the production as anything more than a diatribe wrapped in a gimmick that's gone past its sell by date.
 

Review by: Caomhan Keane