With An Inspector Calls so successful as refurbished with astonishing scene design and attention to social message, no wonder similar treatment is being lavished on J. B. Priestley's Dangerous Corner. Though neither the play nor the staging is as good, Priestley's experiment (for his day) with realism and time affords isn't bad to look at or listen to.
The piece begins spectacularly when a tree-filed scrim rises on a woman in sleek cocktail dress looking out the window-wall of a posh contemporary home. She (Jacqueline Pearce, in full command) is a successful author and center of attention at a cocktail party hosted by her publishers, Robert (handsome Rupert Penry-Jones) and Freda Caplan (aptly tentative Caroline Faber). Among their friends, Pearce's last novel, "Sleeping Dogs," raises the topic of when it's best to tell the truth and when better to let it lie. When cigarettes are passed out to accompany drinks, the elaborate cigarette box recalls its carver, recently deceased young Martin Caplan.
When the author leaves, those remaining wake the first "sleeping dog": Had Martin stolen money? Is that why he shot himself? Or is "no" the answer to both questions? And why? Once those present begin to probe, they pass a dangerous corner, indeed, around which lurk answers and more questions and revelations that will change their individual relationships and lives forever. One cannot go back and see these people the same way again.
All said, the performances are straightforward, with Pearce's the most memorable. I don't know if Priestley meant bachelor Charles to be a black man, but his "difference" from the others certainly works here, thanks to Patrick Robinson. Katie Foster-Barnes seems too young as Bette, and her dress of hideous wrinkled brown looks like a slip.
With Priestley's typical device of stripping away characters' facades one by one, then reassembling everything for a new look at first impressions, why isn't the effect more exciting? Especially after a chilling end scene in which a bird seems to fly splat into the window, seen from outside as at the start! Maybe because those people inside weren't all that interesting either at start or end.
