Critique of capitalism as relevant as ever
An Inspector Calls mulls income inequality
To help prepare for a new production of J.B. Priestley’s An Inspector Calls, William B. Davis attempted to summarize to the cast the ideas behind an 800-page book by a French economist about capitalism and its discontents.
“It’s quite terrifying, in terms of where our society is going,” said the director, perhaps best known for his role as the Cigarette Smoking Man on TV’s The X-Files.
“It harks back to the kind of income inequality that existed before the First World War, where when you have that level of divergent wealth, the wealth starts to produce itself automatically so the capitalist society continues to grow and the workers’ society continues to be depressed,” said Davis, describing the underlying themes of Thomas Piketty’s 2013 tome Capital in the Twenty-First Century.
“World War One broke that system. Now we have it again. But we have the additional danger of a climate catastrophe if we don’t work together to solve our problems.”
Apparently, the cast decided to stick around anyway.
Written in 1945 and set in 1912, An Inspector Calls is “remarkably, more topical now than ever,” said Davis. One evening, an upper-middle-class English family is celebrating the engagement of their daughter. But the Birlings’ celebration is interrupted by Inspector Goole, who is looking into the suicide of a young working-class woman.
Davis was partly inspired to do the play by the Stephen Daldry version, which revived the play (and interest in Priestley’s work) in London’s West End in 1992. That version went on to tour the U.K. and spawn a successful Broadway run.
Just this past November, it was brought back to London’s West End.
The director/actor calls Daldry’s vision “very impressionist and dramatic and creative. When I saw it I thought, I’d like to see this play closer to how it’s written, because it’s such a wonderful play.”
He also had an actor in mind for the role of Inspector Goole: John Prowse, with whom he’d worked before. Other actors in the upcoming production include Keith Martin as Arthur Birling, the wealthy industrialist and head of the Birling household, along with Julie-Lynn Mortenson, Chris Walters, Sarah Arnold, Keith Martin Gordey, Jordon Navratil and Lesli Brownlee.
When it comes to affecting the proper accents, Davis, who trained as a director on the London stage, says that he’s “not pushing it too, too hard. I don’t want the audience going, ‘Did they get the accents right?’ If that’s what the audience is worrying about, then we’re in trouble. The play’s story should be carrying them along.”
It’s not Downton Abbey, but period elements such as costumes (by Kate Carr) and set design (by John Taylor) will make viewers of the British drama feel at home, where home has a drawing-room.
An Inspector Calls might even inspire some audience members to take Capital in the Twenty-First Century down off the shelf, where it rests next to an unread copy of A Brief History of Time. “It’s a mystery story,” said Davis of the play. “But the underlying issues are issues of income inequality and the need for a more caring society.”