A Review of J.B. Priestley's "An Inspector Calls"

“An Inspector Calls,” by J.B. Priestley, directed by Stephen Delay, part of the 2018-1019 repertoire of the Shakespeare Theater in Washington D.C., was an enjoyable theatrical experience. The play was once a war horse that galloped across the world’s stages after its premiere—in The Soviet Union no less—in 1945. Why beat a near-dead horse? I’m not completely sure, but I'm grateful that the director chose to revive it—There is obviously life in the old steed yet.

It is a didactic play, true, but quite an innovative and entertaining one, nevertheless.  We know where Priestley’s sympathies lie as the unrepentant capitalist, Mr. Birling, says the following lines at the beginning of the play: "The way some of these cranks talk and write now, you'd think everybody has to look after everyone else, as if we were all mixed up together like bees in a hive--community and all that nonsense." Priestley, like the best of us in every generation, was undoubtedly one of those "cranks". 

"Love yourself and cheat your neighbor," a travesty of The Golden Rule, is still the unspoken mantra of many, 73 years after the play was written. Thus this idea play has still alas! a very contemporary message.

The mise-en-scene is quite impressive. The stage presents a large Victorian house on shaky foundations. The house reminded me of models on a train-set board lovingly erected by my father every Christmas when I was a kid. Its doll-house-like proportions in this production affords a view only of a dining room table around which the wealthy family gathers to celebrate the engagement of Birling's daughter to a younger version of himself, a promising little Koch, expected to exploit for years to come, expected to play dirty with a pristine conscience in the vacuous spirit of his soon-to-be father-in-law.

In the first scene, after the house opens into two equal wings, we find the family seated around a dining room table. The cramped space symbolizes the cramped spiritual life of the inhabitants.

Then the inspector calls, a police inspector named Goole, no less.  A young woman has poisoned herself with disinfectant, symbolizing the moral filth of the upper class members who are, as we shall see, responsible for her death. The family asks the inspector what the young girl’s death has to do with them?  Apparently plenty.

Each family member discovers during the course of the play that their consciences are as diaphanously clear as a pile of Newcastle coal. They killed her as assuredly as the measles virus killed countless numbers of Indians during the Spanish conquest of South America. The virus in this case is that murderously infectious vector of the upper class, namely, exploitation of the poor. (The patriarch fired her because she wanted an increase in wages; his wife had her fired from her subsequent employment for a frivolous reason; the fiancé abused her sexually; Birling's son impregnates her; the matriarch refuses to help her  because she had become “a fallen woman.”

It is a bit too much; the author wants to demonstrate that most members of the upper class are guilty, a defensible position that comes across dramatically as an ineffective exaggeration. That’s not all: the reason she approaches the matriarch for help is that the latter's impecunious son has been stealing from his father in order to support her. The young girl is just too pure to accept stolen money—Oh, brother!

It reminds me of a wonderful, unintended Zen moment from a Marx Brothers film, A Night at the Opera. The bad guy is beating some poor schlep. Groucho stops him with the following words, “Hey, you big bully, why are you picking on that little bully?”

We’re all bullies; nobody’s innocent. What makes one bully a little one is simply due to a lack of power. That the oppressed young girl, born with mud in her mouth while the others eat off a silver spoon, is the only one in the entire play who is as innocent as a canary in coal mine, strikes us as being gratuitously and undramatically ideological. In real life she would most likely be less concerned with the means rather than with the end, namely, survival. Who could blame her? J.B. Priestley perhaps.Truth is, we are all guilty, but the powerful are a good deal more guilty than the powerless “little bullies”; the former alone have the means to be really mean.

In this age of gross inequality, however, Priestley's assessment of society is more apropos than ever. 

It is difficult to read the newspapers these days without getting depressed. To get myself out of the pit into which the world’s abuses have thrown me, I’ve read some of the books by Steven Pinsker, who claims that the world is getting better, and provides convincing charts to prove it. One need only think of the many programs that combat inequality which Great Britain has promulgated in the years since An Inspector Calls was written. Still… 

The arc of justice may eventually lead to a pot of gold--but does it have to be so long; does it have to pass over such desperate landscapes in order to reach its happy goal?

A metaphor taken from physics consoles. According to a theory, there was  an equal amount of matter and antimatter at the time of creation. Each category annihilated the other. A small amount of matter, which comprises our entire cosmos today, remained, since it took more time to turn into matter and thus escaped destruction.This might be a good metaphor for human history. In each generation, evil and good are present in almost equal amounts; however, in each generation, after much suffering and destruction, a small amount of good prevails.

Thus, in every generation “matter” inspectors visit and, with a message of “Love your neighbor” examine our consciences and inspire us to do better. Yet every generation receives visits, in almost equal measure, from antimatter inspectors whose message is “Gold loves you just the way you are.” According to Pinsker and his convincing charts, the good inspectors predominate, if ever so slightly.

In this view, genesis occurs with every generation anew. This is why the family members, after discovering that the inspector was a phantom, revert to their greedy ways. The only ones who have “learned their lesson”, the bride and her brother, are the surviving elements of “matter," the unannihilated remnant of good which will make the next generation better. Hope for the future? Perhaps.

Then comes Priestley’s theatrical surprise. There is an inspector after all, and he will call on the family shortly. Everyone, a new generation of the same characters,  will have to confront their antimatter again—a profound message presented with a theatrical tour de force.

The acting and directing were superb. Kudus to Shakespeare Theater for reviving this interesting play!