Clive Francis (The Crown, Netflix), Barbara Marten (Casualty) and Liam Brennan (Diary of a Madman – winner of a Stage Edinburgh Award) will lead a dynamic cast in the much-anticipated return of Stephen Daldry’s multi award-winning production of JB Priestley’s An Inspector Calls which opens at London’s Playhouse Theatre on 4 November 2016.
As Clive Francis bursts onto our TV screens in the brand new series of The Crown, also directed by Stephen Daldry (among others), he will concurrently play the intransigent Mr Birling at the Playhouse Theatre. Alongside Barbara Marten and Liam Brennan, he will be joined on stage by Matthew Douglas, Carmela Corbett, Hamish Riddle and Diana Payne-Myers – still treading the boards aged 88.
This production marks the 70th anniversary of the first UK staging of the play and the 25th anniversary of its first appearance at the National Theatre.
Since 1992, Daldry’s production of An Inspector Calls has won a total of 19 major awards, including four Tony Awards and three Olivier Awards, and has played to more than 4 million theatergoers worldwide. An Inspector Calls is the most internationally-lauded production in the National Theatre’s history.
JB Priestley’s brilliantly constructed masterpiece powerfully dramatises the dangers of casual capitalism’s cruelty, complacency and hypocrisy. Stephen Daldry’s epic production highlights the play’s enduring relevance.
Written at the end of the Second World War and set before the First, An Inspector Calls is a compelling and haunting thriller. The story begins when the mysterious Inspector Goole calls unexpectedly on the prosperous Birling family home. Their peaceful family dinner party is shattered by his investigations into the death of a young woman.
