David Thewlis to lead cast of BBC One adaptation of An Inspector Calls". DIY Magazine. 3 February 2015 . Retrieved 9 March 2015. Evlyne: “I’m really bad at this stuff! A lot of people tend to make their dressing rooms cosy with nice blankets and things. I just bring everything that I have in my bag and that’s pretty much it. George: “I think it beats doing any other boring job. I did find out quite early on in Year 6: for the end-of-school plays we did The Wizard Of Oz and I completely rewrote the script because I thought it was rubbish, and obviously made my parts the best.

David Thewlis. "David Thewlis to lead cast of BBC One's adaptation of JB Priestley's An Inspector Calls - Media Centre". BBC . Retrieved 23 September 2015. An Inspector Calls is on the school curriculum, sure to attract GCSE pupils and their parents alike to next year’s tour. Did you study it at school? If so, did you enjoy it? Does your appreciation of the play differ as an adult? Aisling Walsh to direct Priestley classic for BBC". Raidió Teilifís Éireann. 30 January 2015. Archived from the original on 2 April 2015 . Retrieved 9 March 2015. Evlyne: “Well, the fact that is has three timelines helps. It’s set across three timelines – you’ve got 1912, which is where the play is set; then you’ve got the future, which is the Blitz, 1945, and then you’ve also got the current now, 2022. You might think Mrs Birling would think hard about what she has done and Eric’s problems, but when she speaks next she just blames Eric. She is more concerned with avoiding a scandal, and this tell us that despite everything that has happened she is not willing to learn from the Inspector and change.While the morality of the play is not particularly nuanced—Arthur Birling, for example, is the archetype of the money-grasping industrialist, while his cold wife (Christine Kavanagh) embodies snobbery and moral disapproval—there is something undeniably satisfying about watching these appalling people being confronted with their misdeeds. The film is set in 1912 and follows the events of a single evening on which the wealthy Birling family is holding a dinner party to celebrate the engagement of their daughter. The festivities are interrupted by a visit from what is taken to be a policeman, Inspector Goole, who is investigating the recent suicide of a local young woman. Goole’s interrogations of each member of the dinner party make it clear that all of them have contributed to the tragedy through individually unjust, selfish or exploitative behaviour. The "Inspector" leaves the subdued group with a warning that human beings have shared responsibility for each other and that this lesson will soon be taught "in fire and blood and anguish" — an apparent reference to the outbreak of World War I two years later. By contrast Sheila Birling objects to her father’s attitude. She does not see employees like Eva Smith as ‘cheap labour’, but emphasises their humanity by referring to them as ‘people’. However, Priestley also makes Sheila a complicated character. Ironically, her unjust complaint at Milwards store leads to Eva Smith losing her job; the last regular job she has. When Sheila recognises her own link in the chain, she is horrified. The Inspector’s words impact on her as she realises that there are wider ideas of justice, since there are ‘millions … of Eva Smiths’ in society and that our lives are all ‘intertwined’. Now world-renowned as one of Britain’s leading theatre and film directors, Stephen Daldry has received Academy Award nominations for his films The Reader, The Hours, Billy Elliot and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. His recent West End theatre work includes David Hare’s Skylight at the Wyndham’s Theatre and Peter Morgan’s The Audience at the Apollo Theatre. His multi award-winning production of Billy Elliot The Musical ran for 11 incredible years at the Victoria Palace before embarking on a national tour.

But all they really know is that they behaved badly to someone like her, one of ‘the millions and millions of Eva Smiths’ – that is, someone who is poor and has no power. Priestley shows that Gerald, Sheila’s fiancé, also has some sense of justice. When he meets Eva Smith (as Daisy Renton) in the Palace Theatre bar, he rescues her from the hands of the lecherous Alderman Meggarty who ‘had wedged her into a corner’. The verb ‘wedged’ and the noun ‘corner’ illustrate her helplessness. Nonetheless, Gerald has a hand in Eva’s downfall too, because he ends his affair with her when it suits him. His deception is also unfair to Sheila. Facebook 0 Tweet 0 LinkedIn 0 Goole by name, ghoul by nature: Liam Brennan’s stern Inspector Goole in An Inspector Calls. Picture: Tristram Kenton, 2019

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Although the play takes place over a single evening, so real time, Inspector Goole seems to exist outside real time. He appears uninvited at the wealthy Birlings’ house Frances Campbell’s theatrical career includes JB Priestley’s Music at Night, Blithe Spirit, Hedda Gabler, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and Hobson’s Choice. As a performer of historical dance, Frances has appeared with Commedia Dell Arte. Since 1992, Daldry’s production of An Inspector Calls has won a total of 19 major awards, including four Tony Awards and three Olivier Awards, and has played to more than 4 million theatergoers worldwide. An Inspector Calls is the most internationally-lauded production in the National Theatre’s history.

JB Priestley’s brilliantly constructed masterpiece powerfully dramatises the dangers of casual capitalism’s cruelty, complacency and hypocrisy. Stephen Daldry’s epic production highlights the play’s enduring relevance. Some people put up fairy lights and flowers, but for me I’m very simple. With autism, as long as I’ve got really comfy clothes, a phone charger and headphones to cancel out sound, I’m all good.” Neither Mr nor Mrs Birling feels any sense of responsibility (another theme in the play connected to justice) for Eva Smith. Gerald, while he truly regrets his part in her death, is still hard-headed enough to find out if an Eva Smith actually committed suicide when the Inspector’s authenticity is doubted. Only Sheila and Eric take on the full impact of the Inspector’s words. They feel responsibility for what happened to Eva Smith and accept that a change in society is needed. Priestley, therefore, suggests that any hope for future justice can only be with the young. George: At the end of the day, at its centre it’s a play about somebody in distress, and that doesn’t get old, does it? I think at different points in time, when we’ve put it on over the last 30 years, it’s been relevant. And this time around I think it’s more relevant than ever because of what’s going on in terms of the strike action and housing crisis.” Written at the end of the Second World War and set before the First, Bradford playwright Priestley’s thriller opens with the mysterious Inspector Goole calling unexpectedly on the prosperous Birling family home. Whereupon their peaceful family dinner party is shattered by his investigations into the suicide of a young, discarded, pregnant factory girl. A scene of devastation: Brian MacNeil’s over-sized doll’s house design for An Inspector Calls, on tour at York Theatre Royal in 2018Christine Kavanagh’s National Theatre credits include Man and Superman and Albert Speer and the National Theatre UK Tour of Hedda Gabler. Her West End credits include The Importance of Being Earnest at the Harold Pinter Theatre. With the Royal Shakespeare Company, Christine has performed Macbeth and Much Ado About Nothing. Her other credits include A Doll’s House, Travesties, She Stoops to Conquer and The Rivals.