By someone who remembers when it was a warning, not coursework...
Review: An Inspector Calls – Birmingham, Alexandra Theatre: UK Tour
Perhaps there is a touch of gimmickry in Stephen Daldry’s now-legendary 1992 production of An Inspector Calls, currently touring nationally and recently seen at Birmingham’s Alexandra Theatre. The smoking ruins, the collapsing house, the parabolic staging--from Edwardian restraint through post-war disillusionment--may evoke the arc of Priestley’s own lifespan, or perhaps something broader: the epoch itself.
Having seen the original, this revival falls short of Daldry's seminal reading. What remains clear, however, is that despite the historic themes--capitalism crushing the working man, the effete indifference of the upper-middle classes, the stark moral reckoning--the blows still land. This once-dismissed bourgeois drawing-room drama has, through Daldry’s vision, become a seismic shift in British theatre: brutal, relevant, and didactic. It's just a little diluted now.
Indeed, in an age increasingly shadowed by unchecked authoritarianism and a limp, morally anaemic British government, the play resonates more powerfully than ever. If anything, it reads now more as allegory than period piece. The disdain for the "unwashed," the marginalised, and the hopeless still festers beneath our so-called advancement. We progress technologically, but ethically, we do not evolve. Like the Birlings, we feign moral awakening--only to dismiss it as theatre. Our hypocrisy remains intact: well-dressed, well-spoken, and utterly self-serving.
So, what of this current tour? The design remains unchanged, but on the cavernous stage of the Alexandra, it suffers. It’s too large, too echoic. I first saw this production in the 1990s at the Playhouse--then, it was a revelation: intimate, unsettling, and fresh. One felt inside it, accused by it. Now, perhaps inevitably, it feels commercialised--packaged for the GCSE circuit. That’s a triumph for the producers, of course, but it also robs the work of its urgency. Before it was a “landmark,” it was just better.
Tim Treloar’s Inspector Goole is charismatic but too concrete--quintessentially Welsh, replete with vocal quirks and even moments of comedy. He’s a strong performer, but he loses the ambiguity, the spectral menace, the otherworldly detachment the role demands. His Goole interrogates like a detective from The Bill, not the cryptic moral arbiter Priestley envisioned. One suspects this is the hand of Associate Director Charlotte Peters rather than Daldry himself. In pursuing performance over presence, exposition over enigma, the production dilutes its own punch. The house collapses, yes--but the fall feels telegraphed, not tectonic.
The Birlings fare better for their more grounded treatment. Jeffrey Harmer's patriarch is all bombastic bluster--a rancid and complacent man, delighted by his daughter’s engagement to the son of a friendly competitor. Jackie Morrison’s Mrs. Birling is superb: furtive at first, then flagrant in her downfall, unravelling the very events that ultimately bring shame on those around her. There’s a clever touch in the way her coiffed hair collapses as her hypocrisy is laid bare--a visual metaphor for the disintegration of her world.
Leona Allen, as Sheila Birling, is less assured. A relative newcomer, she’s often out of sync. Her delivery is rushed, her lines garbled, and her emotional arc feels short-circuited. It’s not that she lacks skill--indeed, in later, quieter moments, she settles into something more truthful. But early on, the emotional embellishments and pacing undermine the clarity of her transformation.
The production’s tone is largely uniform, with a signature Northern lilt and the occasional whiff of overripe earnestness. There’s a cadence here--distinctly regional--that some may find atmospheric, others distracting.
Ultimately, this revival lacks the layering that Daldry, so gifted and intuitive a creative mind, brought to the original. The mentor's presence is missing. Charlotte Peters holds the reins here, and while her work is competent, it feels like a facsimile.
Bottom line: A faithful copy, but stripped of enigma. The shell remains, but the soul flickers.