Flawed early Priestley gets a sparky revival ‘C
ommonplace” is how one critic accurately described an early production of JB Priestley’s 1932 play, The Roundabout. Certainly there is good reason why this effete little comedy, by the writer of An
Inspector Calls and Time and the Conways, has barely appeared on stage since. Hugh Ross’s sparky revival – the first in 80 years – wisely never pretends this trifling piece is anything more than it is.
It takes place over the course of one Saturday at the country residence of Lord Kettlewell, a wealthy businessman whose investments are in crisis. For reasons that are never entirely clear, he has found himself host to a very busy household as his estranged wife and daughter, Pamela, whom he hasn’t seen for many years, plus his mistress all turn up unannounced in quick succession.
Priestley, whose Left-leaning politics reverberate loudly through his most famous plays, appears to set the stage for a serious ideological spat between Kettlewell (a stiff Brian Protheroe) and the Communist Pamela, who has just returned from Russia burning with revolutionary zeal and with her friend, Comrade Staggles, in tow. Yet it is soon clear that the respective politics of father and daughter, coupled with the turbulent backdrop of Thirties Europe, are little more than window dressing for what is, at heart, a flyweight country house comedy.
Much of the subsequent fun is at the expense of Staggles, delightfully played by Steven Blakeley as a gormless, self-important revolutionary who may admirably consider the maid, Alice, his social equal, but can’t understand why it doesn’t follow that she’ll succumb instantly to his blundering advances.
There is also wonderful work from Hugh Sachs as Kettlewell’s decadent friend Chuffy Saunders, who spouts forth Wildean aphorisms and whose louche exterior conceals an ability to see everyone for what they really are.
But the performance of the evening comes from Bessie Carter, daughter of Imelda Staunton and Jim Carter, who makes her professional debut here. She lends the glamorous Pamela – a girl clearly much more at home in a cocktail dress than in the androgynous garb of a true Communist – a delightfully Puckish sense of mischief.
Priestley, though, seems to have lost interest in his own play as it proceeds. A chance to up-end the social order with a subplot concerning the butler, who at one point looks to have made his fortune on the horses, is not followed through. And Kettlewell faces the collapse of his business interests with a ho hum attitude which confirms that in the end is content to go with the status quo.