An Inspector Calls at the Wallis Theatre

Directed by film and stage director Stephen Daldry, J.B. Priestley’s 1945 “An Inspector Calls” is now at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts now through February 10.

The play is part murder mystery, part Twilight Zone and part critique of the selfishness and lack of compassion of the wealthy class.

We meet the rich Birling family in 1912 at their wealthy home which is locked up for the beginning of the play. The audience views the family and guests when they step outside or pop their heads out of the windows. Inside the lavish Edwardian home, the family is celebrating the recent engagement of daughter Sheila (Lianne Harvey) and Gerald Croft (Andrew Macklin), when an Inspector Goole (Liam Brennan) arrives and announced that a young woman has committed suicide.

At first, the family members deny any involvement with the deceased girl, but one by one they each confess that they did something that probably contributed to her death. Birling’s patriarch Arthur (Jeff Harmer) and wife Sybil (Christine Kavanaugh) remain unmoved by the confessions while the younger Birlings Sheila and Eric (Hamish Riddle) feel guilt regarding their actions.

The set design (Ian MacNeil) is superb. As the inspector questions each dinner member, the house opens up like a dollhouse forcing the family to walk outside onto the World War II ravaged and bombed landscape outside of their home. The home, thanks to Stephen Warbeck, also has it’s own Law and Orderish unnerving score.

Also a standout is Edna (Diana-Payne Myers), who at 90 years of age plays the housekeeper serving up tea and waiting on the family and who is also one of a group of silent onlookers that appear midway through the play.

Although the play is over 70 years old, it’s message for a less greedy and more just society still rings true in today’s political world.