LONDON — It was the chance of a lifetime. Invited to direct at the prestigious Royal National Theatre, up-and-comer Stephen Daldry could suggest the play of his choice.
So what did Daldry choose J.B. Priestley's "An Inspector Calls," a staple of English schools, radio shows and amateur companies.
"It is just about the most performed play in England," concedes Daldry. "There are hundreds and hundreds of productions each year."
Not like this one. Daldry turned Priestley's drawing room mystery into a dark psychological thriller and played up its social commentary. His production, which opened at the National in September, 1992, was so popular it later toured Britain and moved to the West End's Aldwych Theatre.
Daldry's "An Inspector Calls" drew great reviews, solid houses and four Olivier awards. "One went in a state of duty," recalls Guardian theater critic Michael Billington, one of many English critics to rave about the show. "But he releases the hidden beauty of the play."
Many New York critics were equally complimentary when the show recently opened on Broadway.
New York Times critic David Richards, for instance, credited Daldry with turning the Priestley potboiler into "one of the more astonishing spectacles on Broadway right now." And Associated Press critic Michael Kuchwara concluded his review suggesting that Daldry join his cast onstage for curtain calls.
Along with such contemporaries as Nicholas Hytner, Sam Mendes and Deborah Warner, Daldry is among a handful of young British directors who have received increasing attention and accolades in the British press. With "Inspector" making such a splash on Broadway, 32-year-old Daldry now joins Hytner, director of both "Miss Saigon" and the current Broadway revival of "Carousel," as someone to watch on both sides of the Atlantic.
Back at home, things also couldn't be much better for the one-time circus clown. Just a few weeks ago, his National Theatre production of Sophie Treadwell's play, "Machinal," won four Olivier awards, including Daldry's second in a row for best direction of a play. Currently artistic director of London's prominent Royal Court Theatre, Daldry has been mentioned as a possible successor to Richard Eyre as head of the National Theatre.
It was largely Daldry's innovative productions of Spanish and German plays that landed him his first National Theatre assignment. But his most recent achievements at both the National and Royal Court have been successful revivals of English and American plays, including the lesser-known "Machinal" and Arnold Wesker's "The Kitchen" as well as "Inspector."
Daily Telegraph critic Charles Spencer wrote that Daldry reminded him of a "canny antiques dealer. . . . He picks up other people's disregarded tat for a song and then performs a brilliant restoration job that reveals the work to be far more valuable than anyone previously suspected."
Consider the possibilities with "An Inspector Calls," for instance. An inspector comes by to notify the upper-class Birling family, home celebrating their daughter's engagement, that a young, lower-class woman has committed suicide. As the evening unfolds, that death is linked to every member of the family in one way or another.
"We reckon that 20% of the audience has been in the play," quips Daldry. "And when we played in Bradford, where Priestley comes from, we reckon 70% of the audience has played the Inspector."
Part of the appeal is "Inspector's" surface simplicity, suggests Kenneth Cranham, the actor who plays Inspector Goole in New York as he did in London. " 'An Inspector Calls' has a simplicity like a medieval morality play, or a Western," says Cranham. "The guy comes to town and rides off."
Cranham is the only Broadway cast member who started with the show in England. Co-starring Philip Bosco and Rosemary Harris, the New York production also uses live music rather than recorded, and incorporates a more sophisticated rain effect.
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But Daldry's Expressionist staging of the play hasn't changed in crossing the Atlantic. On Broadway, the Royale Theatre's stage also rakes at an odd angle, says designer Ian MacNeil, to make everything seem out of kilter. And the Birling home is again a life-size doll's house balanced on stilts, allowing for some dazzling stage tricks.
Daldry, who first tackled "Inspector" in the late '80s for York Theatre Royale, indicates he was attracted as much by the play's politics as by its staging potential. Priestley, who did weekly wartime broadcasts, wrote the play in 1944 in hopes of prodding his countrymen to a Labour Party victory after the war. Its first production was in Moscow (in August, 1945), not London.
"An Inspector Calls" is set in 1912 Yorkshire, but Daldry surrounds the Birling house with a 1940s landscape of war, despair and poverty. The play's terrain is a wasteland filled with poor, dazed children and adults who occasionally serve as witnesses, a chorus to what is happening onstage and, by inference, in contemporary England.
