Year 10 - Drama GCSE - Theatre Review of An Inspector Calls

On the 13th of February 2003, I went to see a production of An Inspector Calls by John Boynton Priestley at Stoke on Trent theatre. I thought the choices that the director made, made the play better, although some of the acting, noise from the audience and having never ever read the play or book before somewhat made the play less exciting to watch.

The set was very well thought out, with the house dominating the center of the stage representing their lives. When the house was together their lives were lives were normal, when it fell apart it symbolized their lives falling apart. The cobbled street, street lamps and houses in the distance made the set look realistic, it gave the stage a real life feel and made it look livable like a real street. The telephone box added atmosphere to the play, this is because when the play was set this is the sort of style the telephone box would have been like. When the maid outside was doing her normal menial tasks it also made the play much better as instead of our attention just focusing on the main characters in the story. It showed other people continuing with their daily routine

The sound and music that is used throughout the play represents some of the good choices the director has made. The cello music built up tension and whilst the children were playing the music used was happy and content this reflected the moods of the children and easily portrayed the feelings within them. Other small occurrences like when the telephone and doorbell rang although they were little things they made a difference as without them you wouldn't have received a fuller and more believable play.

Another acting performance that had an effect on me was when the Birling's, Croft's and audience discovered that no girl named Eva Smith or any girl for that fact had been killed that afternoon. Both the characters and the audience had a shock we didn't know what was going on. The characters thought it must have been a dream and so did the audience.

A scene that had a big emotional impact on the audience was when the house fell apart. This is because the house was the Birling's lives and when it fell apart it symbolised their lives falling apart. This is when they all somehow talked themselves in to the fact that they in some way added to the death of Eva Smith. It had an emotional impact in the way the house fell apart, it slowly came apart with all the plates and belongings breaking away. When the house came back together it was as if their li

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Approximate Word count = 913
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)