An Inspector Calls (review)

 Spoilers ahoy! 

An Inspector Calls should almost be dated.  Written in the wake of the second world war, it seems to address issues specific to its era.

Yet here we are.  Topical as ever. Maybe moreso, frankly.

J.B.Priestley's play might almost count as an inspiration for The Twilight Zone.   Exactly why I'll leave for you to find out.  But the set up involves an engagement party in the home a wealthy businessman named Birling (David Hunt Stafford) whose daughter Sheila (Katyana Rocker-Cook) plans to wed Gerald (Isaac W. Jay), while Mrs. Birling (Diana Angelina) beams in pleasure and the son of the family, Eric (Monty Renfrow).  Everyone--or almost everyone--feels extremely pleased with themselves, amid drinks and talk of jewelry and of course business affairs.  

Indeed Birling himself gives a speech to his son all about how, no matter what anyone says, responsibility counts for nothing compared to taking care of one's own.  With superb timing, mere seconds after such declarations, the title come true.  Edna the Housekeeper (Quinn de Vries) comes in with news an Inspector has arrived and wishes to speak with them.  When said Inspector (Mouchette van Helsdingen) enters with dreadful news--news which upsets everyone who hears it.  Some.  Not a lot.  Not at first.  A young woman named Eva Smith (Isabella DiBernadino on the night I saw it) has killed herself in a quite dreadful way, leaving behind a sort of diary.  The Inspector intends to find out what led to this tragedy, and what awaits the Birling family are a series of revelations from which they may never recover--although they will do their absolute most to refuse to allow that.  

Director Cate Caplin made some interesting tiny changes in this production--staged for only a handful of performances at the utterly grand Graystone Manor--not least making the Inspector a woman (given this is 1932, absolutely impossible but honestly I for one don't care much).  Most interestingly, though, is how the memory--maybe the ghost--of Eve Smith wanders on stage now and then.  It creates a sense someone is watching the characters, remembering their actions, judging them.  Very appropriate as events transpire.  It brings into sharper relief themes explored in speech, but only slightly in action.  Methinks this choice proved wise.  

More, it echoes what this play clearly intends to do.  The characters end up haunted, and hopefully so to members of the audience.  As far as performances go, much of the action in the play is carried by the Inspector, by Sheila, then eventually Gerald and Eric.  Perhaps intended as a hint of how the young must shoulder most of the burden of change?  Priestley's play harkens to such ideas quite vividly, one reason it remains consistently produced seven decades after opening.  

A blend of mystery and drama, with more than a few hints of the uncanny, performed and staged for emotional impact are what this play needs to work.  Beyond doubt in this production has achieved precisely that.

An Inspector Calls plays Wednesday through Saturday (Jan. 14 thru 17) at 7:30pm, and Sunday (Jan 18) at 2pm.  Tickets can only be purchased online at the link in the title.  Performances are at Graystone Mansion (905 Loma Vista Dr, Beverly Hills, CA 90210) which nicely has plenty of parking.  

Beatnik Girl (review)

 

Spoilers ahoy!

I am genuinely sorry it took me so long to see this play at Theatre40 in Beverly Hills. Beatnik Girl by my friend Leda Siskind has closed, but I hope this was only the first of many productions.

This show, directed by Ann Hearn Tobolowsky, centers around a character named Edie Gordon (Rebecca Del Santo) an aspiring poet and writer in 1950s New York, the era of the beatniks.  Here was the nascent beginning of what eventually became the wave of change and reform which led to the Sixties, the Civil Rights Movement, Watergate, and the ongoing struggles against modern misogyny, anti-semitism, and a suffocating sense of conformity.  Edie faces pretty much all of the above, enduring some harrowing relationships and events before emerging as a confident voice of the era.

What I most want to impress upon everyone was how this production ultimately sucked me into the era.  In fact, as the show ended and the top notch cast took their bows, I did not applaud.  Rather I snapped my fingers, in tune with that period, not because of any attempt to compliment, but because it felt so very natural to do so.  

No small feat!

The entire cast contributed to this effect, but apart from Del Santo I especially want to call attention to Andrea Goones who played four very different characters with great skill, but mostly the really meaty part of Nadie, Edie's neighbor and best friend.  Her trajectory formed a lot of the spine of what was happening, not least for her charming but frustrating innocence, with a support system too small as well as not nearly skilled enough for what she was going through.  Edie, despite  her highs and lows, remained forever a portrait of someone gathering strength.  Nadine needed more help.  Sadly, she simply did not get it, and in the end she haunted me the most.

Steven Dawn Hart played three roles, and while his parts were smaller he infused each one with a sense of full humanity (even the total *ssw*p* jerk). 

Rounding off the cast were Bradley James Holzer and Alex Seycurka playing some important supporting roles, both achieving a realism I increasingly accepted on a visceral level (hence the above "snapping").

Plus, this play solves a wonderful technical problem about any play that focuses so much one one character--Edie--that we need to change the sets and costumes over and over again.  The danger is always of losing momentum as the action seems to stop.  This show's solution (built into the script) is to have a sax player on stage, offering live music to transition not only between scenes but between our present and the year 1957.   In this production the performer serving such a vital function was Adam Zilberman.

I felt absolutely transported into another time, another place, surrounded by characters whose complexity felt almost disturbingly real.  My deep hope is many another production will follow.

Theatre Forty is at 241 S. Moreno Drive, Beverly Hills CA 90212 (and has plenty of parking).