It's a staple of GCSE English, and a classic of the British Theatre, but one ingenious staging of An Inspector Calls has endured for more than 30 years.
Stephen Daldry's multi award winning production was first seen at the National Theatre back in 1992 - starring Kenneth Cranham as the enigmatic Inspector Goole.
It went on to scoop multiple Olivier, Evening Standard and Tony awards and ran in both the West End and on Broadway.
Now the longest running revival of a play, it's been seen by over 5 million theatregoers and is back on tour, including a three-week residency at Alexandra Palace Theatre.
The Victorian playhouse will be an atmospheric setting for a play that was written at the end of the Second World War, but is set just before the First World War in the home of the prosperous Birling family.
Their celebratory dinner party is shattered by Goole's investigations into the death of a young woman - his startling revelations shake the very foundations of their lives and challenge us all to examine our consciences.
Daldry who went on to direct Billy Elliott, The Hours, and episodes of The Crown, talks about how his production is a conversation across three time zones, 1912, 1944, and today.
Q: When you were first asked to direct An Inspector Calls in 1989 you weren't sure about it. Why was that?
A: It was a staple of amateur theatre companies at the time. It took some time of researching where he wrote it, why he wrote it, where and how it was first performed, before I realised that it was much more radical than it had become known as.
JB himself was uninspired by the original London production in 1946. It had originally been done in two theatres in Moscow, and those productions were quite radical. So I tried to bring it back to his radical roots and do a production which I thought JB might be more interested in.
Q: Did you ever meet JB Priestley, who died in 1984?
Sadly I never met JB, but I was lucky enough to meet Jacquetta Hawkes, who was his wife. I talked her through this production, and got her blessing. I did say - I'm trying to do a production which reveals the play as it was meant to be written, tell me if I've gone off beam. And she loved it.
Q This production has toured almost every year since 1992. Did you imagine that it could be a long runner?
A: Not at all. It was originally programmed for a short run at the National. I think there was a certain nervousness about what I was doing. There were cobbles, and there was rain, and it was quite - is still quite - a demanding show for the actors.
I think there was a nervousness about a radical reworking of a classic. But in the end, it all worked. And then it just carried on - we transferred it and transferred it again. I can't remember how many West End theatres we've been in.
Q: What changes have you made over time?
A: Remarkably, very few. It's pretty much the same production as it was when we opened at the National. It's interesting to watch a production that you did all those years ago, of a young director grappling with this play. I'm not sure now if I would have done the same production, or been as bold as I was in my late twenties.
Q: What is it like returning to something as opposed to working on something new?
A: What I love about the play is how it is perceived each time it's done; how the audience reacts. It always seems to be a play for today - a play of our times. And it does often intersect with issues of the day. So the issue of the day, for example, would be a young mother, who's living on her own, about to have a baby, and can't find any means of economic support. That thing about mothers, about who's meant to support them, what is the role or responsibility of the father, of the family, of the state, still feels like a very current conversation.
Q: Is that why it is being revived again now?
A: When we first performed it, it was very much in the world of Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government, and Thatcher was saying there's no such thing as society, there's only men and women and families, and so this was a broadside against that mentality and that Edwardian idea.
The original idea of the production was to have a conversation between three time zones - it’s set in 1912, Priestley was writing it in 1944-45. It was about trying to create a social debate. There was a Labour government almost inevitably coming in, but the conversation in 1945, about what kind of society we wanted after the war, what sort of society do we want to be a part of, was very current for JB, who himself was an MP. He stood for the Common Wealth Party; essentially a socialist independent.
That conversation still feels as current today as it did when we first did the play in ‘92, and indeed, when JB first wrote the play in the great Labour landslide of 1945.
Q: It’s a sort of modern morality play - is that something that we do much of these days?
A: No, I don't think we do. It is a morality play and it's a little bit of agitation and propaganda. You have a character who stands in front of the audience and says what he thinks and what we should be doing, and I love that. I think it's thrilling to have a political play that's directly in conversation with his audience.
When we did it in New York, a lot of the audience felt it was verging on communist. People would leave, saying I don't like this, it's preachy. It wears its morality on his sleeve.
Q: Can art inspire social change?
A: I think that's the reason why we do it. I've always believed anything you make that's in a genuine conversation about the world we live in, shifts the conversation, and even if it makes just one person think or change, then yes. Trying to make the world a better place and have a conversation about the world we live in is, I think, the point of doing any piece of work.
Q: An Inspector Calls was a sort of call to action, that prefigured the welfare state. How do you think it lands now?
A: The welfare state is in crisis in every possible way, from the NHS, to social care to an ageing population. How we, as a society, wish to embrace those changes that are happening to our population and embrace our health service, what the solutions are - can we afford it? Who's going to pay for it? How do we look after our old folk, how do we look after people in poverty, how do we get people out of poverty? All those questions are, I think, more acute today, perhaps than they've been at any time in my life. I think the play speaks radically to the audience now, about what sort of society we want to be a part of.
Q: The play is sometimes thought of as a ghost story, but it's actually a ‘time play’.
A: JB Priestley had this theory that we have parallel lives in parallel time zones. So your behaviour, and attitudes can determine the life that you are living now in this world, and there are multiple universes. It sounds like The Matrix.
In this play, time stops for a moment, and you see the future. The Inspector comes in, to interrogate what is about to happen. It is, I believe, to give the characters an opportunity, so that when the thing happens, they're prepared, morally, for the responsibility that they have. He gives them a dry run.
An Inspector Calls runs at Alexandra Palace Theatre from August 30 until September 21.
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