BWW Reviews: AN INSPECTOR CALLS On Oyster Mill Playhouse

Many plays are called classics; however, one isn't always sure just what defines that term. On the other hand, were you in school in England, you would be studying JB Priestley's AN INSPECTOR CALLS in your classes. It's a play that everyone's simply expected to know. First performed in Soviet Russia in 1945 and then in England in 1946, it may be a bit heavy-handed as to Priestley's socialist politics and dislike of businessmen's greed, but it's far more than that. Not quite a mystery - it's no secret that Eva Smith, or Daisy Retton after her name change, killed herself, it's also not quite fantastic (just who or what is the Inspector, and just when did Eva Smith die?), and it's certainly a tale of social morality, as we discover that almost everyone who knew Eva had a hand in contributing to her suicide through intentional or accidental cruelty of one sort or another.

Perhaps the best known of Priestley's "time plays," it's also on stage at Oyster Mill Playhouse, one of the few theatres in the area whose intimate size can do the show full justice. Set in the dining room of the well-off Birlings on the night of their daughter's engagement to Gerald, the son of Arthur Birling's major business competitor, the play is, almost in its entirety, composed of Inspector Goole's inquisition of the Birling family with regard to Eva Smith's death. Goole is an unlikely police inspector, not at all deferential to the Birlings' wealth, to the delicacy of the women present, and completely devoid of manners in general. He has only one goal - to make each person in the house reveal their connection to Eva Smith and their contribution to her suicide.

Nick Hughes is a likely Inspector Goole - bluff, British to the core, and able to make words rip like a bandage being pulled off of an arm. Hughes is always a fine thing to see on stage, and he's no exception here. It's perfectly possible to look at Goole as the British social conscience of 1913, left over from the Victorian era's missionary concern for the care of young working girls, as much as a Socialist voice; both blamed greedy businessmen and vain women of means as exploiters of lower-class youth. Charles E. Smith is Arthur Birling, factory owner, union buster, and the play's equivalent of America's popular conception of WalMart for his care for his workers. His wife Sybil, played by Marianne Krahulec, is his equal in all ways, wielding manners and proper behavior as weapons rather than as social lubricant and withholding charity contributions to applicants she personally dislikes.

Eric Birling, a genial, foolish alcoholic and, if his sister does not marry Gerald, the likely heir to Arthur's factory, is Keith Bowerman, who plays Eric with one hand on a decanter and the other hand grasping for something to hang onto, while Mary McCleary plays his sister, Sheila, as a socialite with sudden stirrings of conscience. While Arthur and Sybil see no wrong in firing Eva and denying her charity later, Eric is conscious of his faults towards her, as Sheila becomes when she realizes that she caused Eva to lose a shopgirl's job one day. Their own perceptions of their wrongs towards Eva are magnified by their horror at their parents' seeing nothing wrong with what they did to the girl. (Sybil manages to maintain her sense of grand justice in her actions and to have no sympathy even though - no real spoiler here - she is responsible through this coldness for the death of her own grandchild, which is possibly the single greatest horror in the story. Kudos to Krahulec for keeping Sybil resolutely upstanding in the worst possible way, and thoroughly unlikeable as a result.) Jonathan Morgan's Gerald Croft, Sheila's fiancé, is in the middle in all ways, wedged between the parents' and the children's opinions about their responsibilities for Eva's death. The one who knew Eva best, he shares some degree of responsibility for her suicide, even though he is also the only one who cared about her as a person. Morgan gives a fine performance here, and between the performance and his appearance seems strongly reminiscent of television and film actor Christian Clemenson in this production.

Ashley Campbell plays Edna, the Birlings' maid. Although it appears to be a small part, and has little stage time, Edna is the visual stand-in for the late Eva, another working-class girl almost completely ignored by those who fancy themselves her social betters. Campbell is a newcomer to the Oyster Mill stage but we may hope to see her here again.

Like the traditional British drawing room murder, AN INSPECTOR CALLS is a three-act play, with a slightly slow warm-up as the setting is created; however, once the Inspector arrives, all bets are off.

Whether you prefer to see Inspector Goole - "ghoul" - as a specter, or as a concerned person disguised as the police, or as the collective conscience that forces itself upon the Birlings before the end arrives - and the end does arrive for them - he's vitally present on stage in Hughes' agitated portrayal of a voice against a dead girl's exploitation. It's Goole that makes the story, and Hughes brings that to the stage in this production.

At Oyster Mill Playhouse through February 1. For tickets and information, call 717-737-6768 or call www.oystermill.com.

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