With his Scottish brogue, crumpled raincoat and forensic (and at times wry) line of questioning, Liam Brennan’s performance as the eponymous non-golfer is a cross between Taggart and Columbo. But in place of the Glaswegian detective’s droll catchphrase “there’s been a murder”, lies a sorry tale about a young woman who committed suicide by drinking disinfectant. And in place of the Californian cop’s meandering enquiries to frame a culprit whose identity, motive and means of execution are revealed in the opening scene, lies an enigmatic whodunnit which attempts to “understand” and “share the blame”.

Brennan’s performance and that of his fellow cast members – who include Jeffrey Harmer as the pigeon-chested businessman Arthur Birling and Christine Kavanagh as his cold-hearted wife Sybil – are perfectly pitched. As is Stephen Daldry’s bold direction which involves the meticulous manipulation of actors from one chess square to another so as to focus attention on the subtext of a line and its impact on a specific individual. But the real “stars” of the National Theatre’s long-running and award-winning revival of J. B. Priestley’s classic thriller – which has been seen by over four million theatregoers worldwide since it opened in 1992 – are the Yorkshireman’s timeless script and Ian MacNeil’s striking set.

From the off, this is no period piece suffocated by tradition and realism. Sirens wail, bombs drop and a scrawny child runs onstage to salvage a few scraps from a puddle. Bored, he kicks an old wireless broadcasting impending doom, peeks under the curtain with a look of shock, then shines a torch directly at the audience: Big Brother is watching, there is no place to hide, we are all implicated in what is to follow. Or as Goole says in response to Birling’s Thatcherite philosophy of “ a man has to mind his own business and look after himself and his own”; “We are responsible for each other. And I tell you that the time will soon come when if men will not learn that lesson, then they will be taught it in fire and blood and anguish.”

The curtain, when it eventually rises, moves painfully slow to reveal an enclosed doll’s house in which the lengthy opening scene unfolds. Talk of port and cigars, the bottom line and knighthoods, waft out of the lace-curtained windows as street urchins in rags and an elderly maid with a stoop shiver in the gutter. A place where the well-to-do Birling family unexpectedly find themselves towards the end of the play when the full ramifications of their involvement in the young woman’s death become painfully clear and their house of cards literally falls to the ground, smashing their ornate crockery and upstanding reputations to smithereens.

In addition to the bold direction and striking set, Rick Fisher’s harsh lighting design and Stephen Warbeck’s discordant score elevate what is usually played as a dry domestic drama to a universal morality tale on an epic scale. Goole’s entrance and exit bookmarked with great flair: the former, in silhouette with his back to the audience and his gaze fixed to the house on the hill; the latter, a straight-to-camera and straight-from-the-heart monologue ending in: “We don’t live alone. Good night.”

Powerful and absorbing, just like this production which returns to Scotland in March 2020 for a week-long run at the Theatre Royal, Glasgow.

Peter Callaghan
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