"How on earth does one sum up JB Priestley? He wrote 39 plays, 26 novels and a huge amount of nonfiction and was dismissed by Virginia Woolf, with characteristic snootiness, as one of the tradesmen of letters. But, in art as in life, tradespeople are invaluable and with one of Priestley's most popular plays, When We Are Married, about to be revived at London's Donmar Warehouse, it is worth asking what the qualities are that make him a durable dramatist."
"It makes sense to start with An Inspector Calls, which was famously revived by Stephen Daldry in 1992 in a production that has lasted for more than 30 years. What Daldry and his designer, Ian MacNeil, did was to cut through the play's schematic outline and treat it as an expressionist fable about a family poised on the edge of self-destruction."
JB Priestley produced a vast body of work across plays, novels and nonfiction and faced dismissive criticism despite popular success. An Inspector Calls survived via staging choices that emphasized expressionist fable and a moral core warning of shared responsibility. Recurrent themes include a plea for social justice and romantic mysticism entwined with explorations of time drawn from JW Dunne and Ouspensky. Time and the Conways and I've Been Here Before illustrate coexistence of past, present and future and recurring lives. Priestley's humane socialism underpins character aspirations and dramatic moments, lending his plays enduring social and emotional resonance.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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