Stephen Daldry’s hugely successful revival of J B Priestley’s play, An Inspector Calls has won more awards than you can shake a stick at since it’s first showing in 1992. It’s both a detective story and a thriller with a large slice of social conscience thrown in for good measure. Set in 1912 the story centres on the wealthy Birling family who have just celebrated the engagement of their daughter to the heir of another successful family business and it would seem that life holds nothing less for them than material reward, honour, respect and happiness. All this is called into question by a visit from the eponymous Inspector, Inspector Goole, clad in the Inspector’s stock in trade costume of battered trilby and damp mackintosh. He has come to them investigating the death of a young local woman, a tragedy which in ordinary circumstances would never affect a family such as theirs but in a twist of fate they are all somehow implicated.

Ian MacNeil’s set cleverly allows the play to cover two time spans, 1912, and then the 1940s by encapsulating the Birling’s palatial drawing room in miniature on stilts, set above the bomb damaged ruin of the street of the future. This, together with some startling special effects contrives to give the play a dark and brooding background.

Geoff Leesley as the solid industrialist Arthur Birling, hoping for a Knighthood to scrape his way through the usually firmly closed gateway of the upper classes, and Karen Archer as Sybil his wife are both excellent. Their beautiful but petulant daughter Sheila is played by Kelly Hotten displaying a seesaw of emotions at her changing circumstances, and Eric the younger and profligate son by Henry Gilbert who somehow makes him a likeable rogue.

The task of Inspector Goole upon whom the larger part of the dialogue rests is taken on the broad shoulders of Tom Mannion who firmly relays the Inspector’s message of anger and impotence in the face of the social injustices of the time. Will we, the audience, have a clear conscience if the Inspector comes to call?

The audience was packed and so it should have been: it’s a great piece of theatre and completely gripping with a surprising twist at the end; and all the more so for not having the interruption of an interval. If you can beg a ticket don’t hesitate - it’s a wonderful evening’s entertainment.

Jacquie Vowles