An Inspector Calls
Little Theatre, May 1986
The New Bristol Theatre Company presents
AN INSPECTOR CALLS
by J B Priestley
CAST
Arthur Birling - Mike Lockett
Gerald Croft - Robin Seavill
Sheila Birling - Mandy Langston
Sybil Birling - Beryl Phillpotts
Eric Birling - Martin Anderson
Edna - Sally Blackmore
Inspector Goole - Don Phillpotts
Directed by
Daphne Ashton & Chester Williams
l to r: Martin A, Mike L, Sally B, RAS, Mandy L, Beryl P
PS
An Inspector Calls, set in 1912, was probably God’s way of telling me to get my hair cut. This was the most cropped it had looked in a long time – ever since Don the barber round the back of Vicky Park Junior School in Bedminster used to give us a short back and sides every other month so severe that you could feel the wind whistling round your naked nape as you walked home with the compensatory Jamboree Bag from your mum – and it took a bit of getting used to. But such physical transformations were, I’m sure, all good experience, and helped me feel less self-conscious once I’d resigned myself to it.
Period costume was also something I wasn’t much used to, and I can well understand how actresses in, say, Jane Austen adaptations or Victorian melodramas feel the physical restriction imposed by their garb subliminally affects their attitudes as much as it hampers their movements. The freer your body, the less disciplined the mind. Certainly, the late Edwardian braces and wing collars I found myself thrust into made me quickly lose patience with the whole schmozzle, and I could easily appreciate how a pompous little prick like Gerald Croft would happily doff the lot to pile into the palliasse with the comely Eva Smith, or Daisy Renton, or whatever name the poor girl was going under when she finally went under him.
Ay oop. Trouble at mill.
Then there was the little Hitler moustache. All my own work, though it lasted no longer than the play, and I was glad to Philishave the old philtrum back to its former state of nature once the run was over.
As Gerald Croft with Inspector Goole, played by Don P, the gentleman I had very nearly accidentally decapitated the previous year during The Provok’d Wife on this very stage.
Though I have no recollection of this, I seem to have had my left ear surgically enhanced for the part, and presumably grew the moustache to try and distract from it. I also appear to be wearing eye shadow, though this was categorically not the case. My family, supportive as always, said I looked like Charlie Chaplin. Bastards.
The party piece version I wrote for this, Another Inspector Calls, was certainly the longest of those little bagatelles, and, like the original, ran to a full three acts. It is the quintessential pièce d’occasion, conceived specifically for this one event and with no relevance beyond that, but I gave it my all because at the time I wasn’t doing anything much else, and I was hugely happy at the way it turned out. It’s tasteless to a fault, of course, but still today I wouldn’t change a word.