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Eden End
Stella Kirby spent nine years running away; leaving home to find her freedom as an actress. Now she has decided that the only role left to play is the prodigal daughter returned, hoping to rediscover herself amongst the familiar surroundings of her childhood home, Eden End.
Priestley has a special tenderness for Eden End and for it he created some of his most fragile, gentle characters. The stoical Dr Kirby, his younger son Wilfred, desperate to prove himself a man of the world, and Lilian, the daughter who stayed at home, are a sharply observed and instantly recognisable family, with all its dreams and disappointments.
Priestley has a special tenderness for Eden End and for it he created some of his most fragile, gentle characters. The stoical Dr Kirby, his younger son Wilfred, desperate to prove himself a man of the world, and Lilian, the daughter who stayed at home, are a sharply observed and instantly recognisable family, with all its dreams and disappointments.
- GenresPlaysBritish Literature
90 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1934
About the author
J.B. Priestley
474 books295 followersJohn Boynton Priestley was an English writer. He was the son of a schoolmaster, and after schooling he worked for a time in the local wool trade. Following the outbreak of the Great War in 1914, Priestley joined the British Army, and was sent to France - in 1915 taking part in the Battle of Loos. After being wounded in 1917 Priestley returned to England for six months; then, after going back to the Western Front he suffered the consequences of a German gas attack, and, treated at Rouen, he was declared unfit for active service and was transferred to the Entertainers Section of the British Army.
When Priestley left the army he studied at Cambridge University, where he completed a degree in Modern History and Political Science. Subsequently he found work as theatre reviewer with the Daily News, and also contributed to the Spectator, the Challenge and Nineteenth Century. His earliest books included The English Comic Characters (1925), The English Novel (1927), and English Humour (1928). His breakthrough came with the immensely popular novel The Good Companions, published in 1929, and Angel Pavement followed in 1930. He emerged, too, as a successful dramatist with such plays as Dangerous Corner (1932), Time and the Conways (1937), When We Are Married (1938) and An Inspector Calls (1947).
The publication of English Journey in 1934 emphasised Priestley's concern for social problems and the welfare of ordinary people.
During the Second World War Priestley became a popular and influential broadcaster with his famous Postscripts that followed the nine o'clock news BBC Radio on Sunday evenings. Starting on 5th June 1940, Priestley built up such a following that after a few months it was estimated that around 40 per cent of the adult population in Britain was listening to the programme.
Some members of the Conservative Party, including Winston Churchill, expressed concern that Priestley might be expressing left-wing views on the programme, and, to his dismay, Priestley was dropped after his talk on 20th October 1940.
After the war Priestley continued his writing, and his work invariably provoked thought, and his views were always expressed in his blunt Yorkshire style.
His prolific output continued right up to his final years, and to the end he remained the great literary all-rounder. His favourite among his books was for many years the novel Bright Day, though he later said he had come to prefer The Image Men.
It should not be overlooked that Priestley was an outstanding essayist, and many of his short pieces best capture his passions and his great talent and his mastery of the English language. He set a fine example for any would-be author.
When Priestley left the army he studied at Cambridge University, where he completed a degree in Modern History and Political Science. Subsequently he found work as theatre reviewer with the Daily News, and also contributed to the Spectator, the Challenge and Nineteenth Century. His earliest books included The English Comic Characters (1925), The English Novel (1927), and English Humour (1928). His breakthrough came with the immensely popular novel The Good Companions, published in 1929, and Angel Pavement followed in 1930. He emerged, too, as a successful dramatist with such plays as Dangerous Corner (1932), Time and the Conways (1937), When We Are Married (1938) and An Inspector Calls (1947).
The publication of English Journey in 1934 emphasised Priestley's concern for social problems and the welfare of ordinary people.
During the Second World War Priestley became a popular and influential broadcaster with his famous Postscripts that followed the nine o'clock news BBC Radio on Sunday evenings. Starting on 5th June 1940, Priestley built up such a following that after a few months it was estimated that around 40 per cent of the adult population in Britain was listening to the programme.
Some members of the Conservative Party, including Winston Churchill, expressed concern that Priestley might be expressing left-wing views on the programme, and, to his dismay, Priestley was dropped after his talk on 20th October 1940.
After the war Priestley continued his writing, and his work invariably provoked thought, and his views were always expressed in his blunt Yorkshire style.
His prolific output continued right up to his final years, and to the end he remained the great literary all-rounder. His favourite among his books was for many years the novel Bright Day, though he later said he had come to prefer The Image Men.
It should not be overlooked that Priestley was an outstanding essayist, and many of his short pieces best capture his passions and his great talent and his mastery of the English language. He set a fine example for any would-be author.
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January 16, 2025
Eden End is a play by J. B. Priestley. Although it is set in 1912, it was first produced in London, in the autumn of 1934. By then of course, the First World War had completely changed the world which was depicted in the play. The title, “Eden End” evokes a simpler time in an innocent world, but also implies an “end”: a loss of that innocence. The audience of the time would be very aware of the devastating impact of the First World War, and for us now, there is a double irony in our knowledge that another, Second World War was yet to happen, a decade on from the original audience’s time. In a way, this slightly plodding drawing-room drama was already old-fashioned when it first opened. But because of our knowledge that Europe was hurtling towards yet another war, it seems very poignant, and the many moments of irony are even more heavily underlined.
In his introduction, J.B. Priestley says that he wondered how he ever came to write it because everything in it was imagined:
“I have never known any people like the Kirby family - and I know nothing in my life that would suggest to me this particular theme of the pathetic prodigal daughter.”
But from our knowledge of the author, and his personal war experience, we can see the wistfulness which would have inspired such a play.
J.B. Priestley had grown up in Bradford, a city in Yorkshire. During the First World War, he was both wounded and gassed. Not surprisingly then, he looked back at the prewar world with fondness and affection. In his memory, he conjured up a golden world, and yet he wondered if this world would be too fragile to survive the many social and economic changes which would come about in the postwar years.
The prewar years, J.B. Priestley tells us, were a time of great optimism, and a confident certainty in the values of home and family. This was the time when Great Britain had ruled an Empire, and opportunities and jobs for young men such as Wilfred Kirby, were abundant. Such was the comfortable world of this play, but the audiences then and afterwards, were well aware that those opportunities would disappear in the years of the Great Depression, as would the British Empire, over time.
J.B Priestley did not use a broad brush to illustrate these devastating world changes, but focused in on a small group of people in a domestic setting. The entire drama takes place in the drawing room of a house in the North of England, called “Eden End”: the literal giving rise to the metaphorical interpretation one anticipates. The play is in three Acts, and revolves around one middle class family.
There is the elderly Dr. Kirby, a widower and an ailing general practitioner, perhaps about sixty years old. He is overworked and seems rueful about his life. He has three adult children: Stella, an actress in her early thirties, Lilian, her younger sister, and Wilfrid, her younger brother. Lilian still lives at home, and acts as a housekeeper for her father. Lilian thinks deeply and reads, and appears to be frustrated and resentful of her lot, hiding her true emotions under a sharp tongue and sarcastic comments. She complains to her brother that she feels obliged to stay at Eden End in order to keep her father company. Lilian shares the domestic work with Sarah, an old servant who still treats the three siblings as if they were children. Wilfrid is employed in Nigeria, having been commissioned in the army. However, he is still quite young and immature: a shallow young man who doesn’t feel he quite belongs either at home or in Africa. Stella Kirby, the eldest, ran away from the family home eight years ago, to be an actress. Also in the play we will meet Geoffrey Farrant, a handsome bachelor and Charles Appleby,.
The entire play hinges around the disturbance and ramifications when Stella unexpectedly returns. She is therefore a “prodigal daughter”, who left in order to pursue a career on the stage. The others’ reactions to her vary enormously, from surprise, to delight to resentment - and barely concealed hatred. As in the biblical tale, some welcome her with open arms, convinced that she has made a success of her life. Surely she must now be world famous, and have found the freedom which so many desire, but do not have the courage to strike out and take? Others accuse her of failure, and having only one role left to play, as the prodigal daughter returned, hoping to discover herself amongst the familiar surroundings of her childhood home, Eden End.
Stella herself seems excited - even overjoyed - by all the familiar sights, and chatters enthusiastically, apparently not noticing the chilly reception she gets from one person. She excitedly questions Wilfred and Lilian about what has happened in her absence.
Dr. Kirby is optimistic about a future that he will not live to see, unaware that England will soon be plunged into a shattering war that will disrupt the lives of all of his children, as would the demise of the British Empire.
The final two scenes turn the screw even more. The “Eden” of Stella’s memories is turning into a confusing nightmare.
Stella’s excitement at coming back to Eden End has fast drained away, now that she sees how life there has changed. The only people who have stayed the same are the garrulous housekeeper, Sarah, and her ebullient younger brother Wilfred, who is on leave from his colonial adventures in Nigeria. Yet even they are fast approaching a point where things will no longer be what they were.
This play is all about the characters, and how they interrelate, and influence—often very negatively—each other. Perhaps it may be innocent, but all too often it seems positively wilful. This destruction of another’s ideals and dreams has echoes of Chekhov. In fact Eden End has always been popular with repertory companies in Great Britain, but not abroad, except for one production in Moscow, Russia in 1945. In 1970, J.B. Priestley himself said that Chekhov was the dramatist who most influenced him. Eden End is an example of J.B Priestley’s Chekhovian style at its best. It is not mere imitation, but moves beyond this to convey the feel of country life in the north of England.
As in Chekhov's plays, in “Eden End” J.B. Priestley explores the elusive search for happiness, and the mess we often make of our lives. His characters struggle for a dignity which they cannot quite achieve, as their hopes for the future are frustrated by the disappointments of the present. J.B. Priestley, also like Chekhov, points up the historical context; the way history makes a farce of our protestations. The characters in Eden End were all so sure that the world was on the brink of a wonderful new era, throughout the play right to the end, and the irony of this is heavily emphasised in the play. All the characters are determinedly looking to a bright future which will not, in fact, dawn for them.
Perhaps in this, J.B Priestley is being even more remarkably prescient. He could be suggesting to the 1930s audience, that their present time, a time of great change and upheaval, might also be remembered by a later generation with the same nostalgia; the same sense of loss. Just as they were doing, of the characters in the play: others may in the future view them the way their generation viewed the world before the Great War. Perhaps some of us looking back on history, might do.
As the author’s own optimism had waned, he seemed to echo his feelings in his creation of the disheartened Stella. She knows that the future could be bleaker still. But also like Stella, J.B Priestley was determined to make a fresh start, and begin again with the business of living. He was therefore suggesting to his contemporary audiences, in the throes of the Great Depression, that this is what they should do as well.
As Charles tells Wilfrid, despite its faults, its disappointments, its moments of pain, life is ultimately a wonderful thing. The telephone will ring, sometimes bringing good news, sometimes bringing bad, but it must be answered. Sarah, the cantankerous but kind-hearted nurse, has lived out her life. She can ignore and be very rude about the newfangled devices, such as gramophones, telephones, motor cars—and other signs of what is called progress. We feel the poignancy, as J.B. Priestley reminds his audience what Yorkshire life was like in those relatively simple, golden, prewar times. But the rest of the Kirby family, he tells us, have to attempt to cope with the present and to prepare for the future, whatever it brings. As with Chekhov, momentous events lurk around the corner.
Life may have seemed simpler in these “Eden Ends” of the past, but J.B. Priestley indicates that human nature remains constant. Human beings remain touchingly muddled, throughout the ages. Men and women will continue to love foolishly, cause one another unnecessary pain, and fail in many of the things they attempt to do with their lives. Yet Dr. Kirby, for instance, continues to bring new life into the world, despite his disappointments, . He touchingly believes that the world will soon be a better place. We know in fact, that this faith is deluded, and that such a time will not dawn yet awhile. The next few years will be far worse—but the “better times” will come. Humans and humanity will survive, in a different kind of world.
We may find sadness in the prospect of time passing, the dwindling of youthful hopes, and the dangerous allure of mere illusion. J.B. Priestley’s play is an enjoyable snapshot of a time long gone, and in it he shows these timeless truths through Northern wit, oafishness and dry sarcasm, intrigue, laughter and innocence, melancholy and mirth, drunkenness, despair—and just a touch of melodrama.
In his introduction, J.B. Priestley says that he wondered how he ever came to write it because everything in it was imagined:
“I have never known any people like the Kirby family - and I know nothing in my life that would suggest to me this particular theme of the pathetic prodigal daughter.”
But from our knowledge of the author, and his personal war experience, we can see the wistfulness which would have inspired such a play.
J.B. Priestley had grown up in Bradford, a city in Yorkshire. During the First World War, he was both wounded and gassed. Not surprisingly then, he looked back at the prewar world with fondness and affection. In his memory, he conjured up a golden world, and yet he wondered if this world would be too fragile to survive the many social and economic changes which would come about in the postwar years.
The prewar years, J.B. Priestley tells us, were a time of great optimism, and a confident certainty in the values of home and family. This was the time when Great Britain had ruled an Empire, and opportunities and jobs for young men such as Wilfred Kirby, were abundant. Such was the comfortable world of this play, but the audiences then and afterwards, were well aware that those opportunities would disappear in the years of the Great Depression, as would the British Empire, over time.
J.B Priestley did not use a broad brush to illustrate these devastating world changes, but focused in on a small group of people in a domestic setting. The entire drama takes place in the drawing room of a house in the North of England, called “Eden End”: the literal giving rise to the metaphorical interpretation one anticipates. The play is in three Acts, and revolves around one middle class family.
There is the elderly Dr. Kirby, a widower and an ailing general practitioner, perhaps about sixty years old. He is overworked and seems rueful about his life. He has three adult children: Stella, an actress in her early thirties, Lilian, her younger sister, and Wilfrid, her younger brother. Lilian still lives at home, and acts as a housekeeper for her father. Lilian thinks deeply and reads, and appears to be frustrated and resentful of her lot, hiding her true emotions under a sharp tongue and sarcastic comments. She complains to her brother that she feels obliged to stay at Eden End in order to keep her father company. Lilian shares the domestic work with Sarah, an old servant who still treats the three siblings as if they were children. Wilfrid is employed in Nigeria, having been commissioned in the army. However, he is still quite young and immature: a shallow young man who doesn’t feel he quite belongs either at home or in Africa. Stella Kirby, the eldest, ran away from the family home eight years ago, to be an actress. Also in the play we will meet Geoffrey Farrant, a handsome bachelor and Charles Appleby,.
The entire play hinges around the disturbance and ramifications when Stella unexpectedly returns. She is therefore a “prodigal daughter”, who left in order to pursue a career on the stage. The others’ reactions to her vary enormously, from surprise, to delight to resentment - and barely concealed hatred. As in the biblical tale, some welcome her with open arms, convinced that she has made a success of her life. Surely she must now be world famous, and have found the freedom which so many desire, but do not have the courage to strike out and take? Others accuse her of failure, and having only one role left to play, as the prodigal daughter returned, hoping to discover herself amongst the familiar surroundings of her childhood home, Eden End.
Stella herself seems excited - even overjoyed - by all the familiar sights, and chatters enthusiastically, apparently not noticing the chilly reception she gets from one person. She excitedly questions Wilfred and Lilian about what has happened in her absence.
Dr. Kirby is optimistic about a future that he will not live to see, unaware that England will soon be plunged into a shattering war that will disrupt the lives of all of his children, as would the demise of the British Empire.
The final two scenes turn the screw even more. The “Eden” of Stella’s memories is turning into a confusing nightmare.
Stella’s excitement at coming back to Eden End has fast drained away, now that she sees how life there has changed. The only people who have stayed the same are the garrulous housekeeper, Sarah, and her ebullient younger brother Wilfred, who is on leave from his colonial adventures in Nigeria. Yet even they are fast approaching a point where things will no longer be what they were.
This play is all about the characters, and how they interrelate, and influence—often very negatively—each other. Perhaps it may be innocent, but all too often it seems positively wilful. This destruction of another’s ideals and dreams has echoes of Chekhov. In fact Eden End has always been popular with repertory companies in Great Britain, but not abroad, except for one production in Moscow, Russia in 1945. In 1970, J.B. Priestley himself said that Chekhov was the dramatist who most influenced him. Eden End is an example of J.B Priestley’s Chekhovian style at its best. It is not mere imitation, but moves beyond this to convey the feel of country life in the north of England.
As in Chekhov's plays, in “Eden End” J.B. Priestley explores the elusive search for happiness, and the mess we often make of our lives. His characters struggle for a dignity which they cannot quite achieve, as their hopes for the future are frustrated by the disappointments of the present. J.B. Priestley, also like Chekhov, points up the historical context; the way history makes a farce of our protestations. The characters in Eden End were all so sure that the world was on the brink of a wonderful new era, throughout the play right to the end, and the irony of this is heavily emphasised in the play. All the characters are determinedly looking to a bright future which will not, in fact, dawn for them.
Perhaps in this, J.B Priestley is being even more remarkably prescient. He could be suggesting to the 1930s audience, that their present time, a time of great change and upheaval, might also be remembered by a later generation with the same nostalgia; the same sense of loss. Just as they were doing, of the characters in the play: others may in the future view them the way their generation viewed the world before the Great War. Perhaps some of us looking back on history, might do.
As the author’s own optimism had waned, he seemed to echo his feelings in his creation of the disheartened Stella. She knows that the future could be bleaker still. But also like Stella, J.B Priestley was determined to make a fresh start, and begin again with the business of living. He was therefore suggesting to his contemporary audiences, in the throes of the Great Depression, that this is what they should do as well.
As Charles tells Wilfrid, despite its faults, its disappointments, its moments of pain, life is ultimately a wonderful thing. The telephone will ring, sometimes bringing good news, sometimes bringing bad, but it must be answered. Sarah, the cantankerous but kind-hearted nurse, has lived out her life. She can ignore and be very rude about the newfangled devices, such as gramophones, telephones, motor cars—and other signs of what is called progress. We feel the poignancy, as J.B. Priestley reminds his audience what Yorkshire life was like in those relatively simple, golden, prewar times. But the rest of the Kirby family, he tells us, have to attempt to cope with the present and to prepare for the future, whatever it brings. As with Chekhov, momentous events lurk around the corner.
Life may have seemed simpler in these “Eden Ends” of the past, but J.B. Priestley indicates that human nature remains constant. Human beings remain touchingly muddled, throughout the ages. Men and women will continue to love foolishly, cause one another unnecessary pain, and fail in many of the things they attempt to do with their lives. Yet Dr. Kirby, for instance, continues to bring new life into the world, despite his disappointments, . He touchingly believes that the world will soon be a better place. We know in fact, that this faith is deluded, and that such a time will not dawn yet awhile. The next few years will be far worse—but the “better times” will come. Humans and humanity will survive, in a different kind of world.
We may find sadness in the prospect of time passing, the dwindling of youthful hopes, and the dangerous allure of mere illusion. J.B. Priestley’s play is an enjoyable snapshot of a time long gone, and in it he shows these timeless truths through Northern wit, oafishness and dry sarcasm, intrigue, laughter and innocence, melancholy and mirth, drunkenness, despair—and just a touch of melodrama.
November 9, 2014
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 11, 2014
From BBC Radio 4 Extra:
Playwright JB Priestley described this play as one for which he had "a special tenderness like that which some parents feel for a certain child."
Although he wrote Eden End in 1934, it's set firmly two years before the Great War. The action takes place in the home of an elderly Yorkshire GP, confronted with a complicated, coincidental family reunion at a time when he sees England and himself coming to the end of an era.
Described for the initial broadcast as a "stereophonic radio version", it features the cast of the 1974 National Theatre production in London.
Starring Joan Plowright as Stella Kirby, Michael Jayston as Charles Appleby and Geoffrey Palmer as Geoffrey Farrant.
Producer Roger Pine.
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1974.
Playwright JB Priestley described this play as one for which he had "a special tenderness like that which some parents feel for a certain child."
Although he wrote Eden End in 1934, it's set firmly two years before the Great War. The action takes place in the home of an elderly Yorkshire GP, confronted with a complicated, coincidental family reunion at a time when he sees England and himself coming to the end of an era.
Described for the initial broadcast as a "stereophonic radio version", it features the cast of the 1974 National Theatre production in London.
Starring Joan Plowright as Stella Kirby, Michael Jayston as Charles Appleby and Geoffrey Palmer as Geoffrey Farrant.
Producer Roger Pine.
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1974.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 30, 2014
Beatrix Lehmann played the role of Stella in the original production of this play. I bought the first printing which was a lovely old hardback. It was interesting to read a play written in the 30s that was looking, in quite a historical way about life in 1912. (Then of course I realised that it would be like writing a play now about life in the 90s and it didn't seem so long ago). But there were lots of nice period references to suffragettes and the role of women as well as colonial attitudes. When I'd read reviews of the play they'd mostly focused on the characters, in particular the sister who was the unneccesful actress returning home and they hadn't mentioned the setting at all. It really was a character piece and despite the age the characters felt very real. It felt like their delimas were still the kind people have today, whether to try and break away from the life they grew up in and risk failure or whether you should just stay comfortable. I found the dialogue to be very good, witty in a very 1930s kind of way. I enjoyed reading this and imagining a young Beatrix in the role.
August 17, 2024
Priestley does watery Chekhov. A family drama on the eve of WW1. A wistful aura over a doomed way of life.
May 26, 2026
Eens te meer een ontroerend tragische Priestley.
Over een dochter die teleurgesteld naar het ouderlijk huis terugkeert, het warme nest waar ze op hoopt.
Als een Engelse Tsjechov toont hij de illusies die ons op de been houden en het rommeltje dat we van ons en mekaars leven maken. Eerlijk ontnuchterend, maar troostend door de liefde voor zijn personages en de empathie die hij oproept.
De dialogen zijn meesterlijk opgebouwd, klinken een kleine eeuw later nog fris.
Over een dochter die teleurgesteld naar het ouderlijk huis terugkeert, het warme nest waar ze op hoopt.
Als een Engelse Tsjechov toont hij de illusies die ons op de been houden en het rommeltje dat we van ons en mekaars leven maken. Eerlijk ontnuchterend, maar troostend door de liefde voor zijn personages en de empathie die hij oproept.
De dialogen zijn meesterlijk opgebouwd, klinken een kleine eeuw later nog fris.
November 1, 2024
Found in a secondhand shop :)
I liked this one a lot! It was alright up until the ending, which I found to be beautifully honest and hopeful.
Can’t always get what you want, but maybe you can learn to want what you get ❤️
I liked this one a lot! It was alright up until the ending, which I found to be beautifully honest and hopeful.
Can’t always get what you want, but maybe you can learn to want what you get ❤️
April 7, 2026
Another play by JB Priestley - and since I enjoyed 'An Inspector Calls' so much, I thought why not try another?
Well this one was sort of boring - one of the worst words in the world! Set in England, 1912, just before the 'Great War.' Here we meet:
Stella, an actress, a kind of prodigal daughter who returns home, expecting I guess, to be greeted and feted over - and she isn't! (You can't go home again, I suppose.) Then there's Lillian, her younger sister. She takes care of the house - and their aging father, a country doctor. Their brother, Wilfred, a rather 'feckless' sort who doesn't know who he is or where he's going. And Geoffrey an old suitor of Stella's who's happy to see her, but bound to be disappointed. Also a nagging servant, Sarah, who I'd have sent to unemployment if I were part of this family. (She hates the telephone! Omgoodness, who needs such a thing?) Finally there's Charles, an engaging and attractive man who drinks too much and sort of upsets everything once he walks on stage.
It's an English family, in other words, dealing with change, disappointment, and dreams which are shattered. I mean, is Stella, the actress, really all that happy? And Lilian, the homebody daughter, what did she want? The brother, Wilfred, he's sort of slap-happy IMO. And so on...
I wasn't very impressed by this play, but I think it does make a statement about life in general. The only one who seems at least a little content is the father, the country doctor, but who also wishes he had done more with his life.
Three stars.
Well this one was sort of boring - one of the worst words in the world! Set in England, 1912, just before the 'Great War.' Here we meet:
Stella, an actress, a kind of prodigal daughter who returns home, expecting I guess, to be greeted and feted over - and she isn't! (You can't go home again, I suppose.) Then there's Lillian, her younger sister. She takes care of the house - and their aging father, a country doctor. Their brother, Wilfred, a rather 'feckless' sort who doesn't know who he is or where he's going. And Geoffrey an old suitor of Stella's who's happy to see her, but bound to be disappointed. Also a nagging servant, Sarah, who I'd have sent to unemployment if I were part of this family. (She hates the telephone! Omgoodness, who needs such a thing?) Finally there's Charles, an engaging and attractive man who drinks too much and sort of upsets everything once he walks on stage.
It's an English family, in other words, dealing with change, disappointment, and dreams which are shattered. I mean, is Stella, the actress, really all that happy? And Lilian, the homebody daughter, what did she want? The brother, Wilfred, he's sort of slap-happy IMO. And so on...
I wasn't very impressed by this play, but I think it does make a statement about life in general. The only one who seems at least a little content is the father, the country doctor, but who also wishes he had done more with his life.
Three stars.
February 19, 2018
A quick introduction: J. B. Priestley was a popular, prolific British novelist and playwright who lived from 1894 to 1984 and whose most successful writing years seemed to be from 1930 to 1950. He also had a political career.
To me, he seemed most comfortable at writing comedy, but his two best known plays, An Inspector Calls and Time and the Conways are dramas. He also seemed better at creating male characters than female.
I have kind of mixed feelings about this one. The setting is interesting, and the characters seem to start off that way, but the central characters are women, and Priestley, as noted above, was less good at creating them. They also run largely to stereotypes of the between-the-wars period. The problem is that when you read Priestley's plays written and set twenty years later, the women are still the same stereotypes, and you kind of give up hope that Priestley's ever going to learn or understand. Consequently, the supposed insights the characters have are both limited and suspect. This seems to matter less in comedy, but when Priestley thinks he's saying something important, he ain't.
To me, he seemed most comfortable at writing comedy, but his two best known plays, An Inspector Calls and Time and the Conways are dramas. He also seemed better at creating male characters than female.
I have kind of mixed feelings about this one. The setting is interesting, and the characters seem to start off that way, but the central characters are women, and Priestley, as noted above, was less good at creating them. They also run largely to stereotypes of the between-the-wars period. The problem is that when you read Priestley's plays written and set twenty years later, the women are still the same stereotypes, and you kind of give up hope that Priestley's ever going to learn or understand. Consequently, the supposed insights the characters have are both limited and suspect. This seems to matter less in comedy, but when Priestley thinks he's saying something important, he ain't.
February 6, 2018
It was OK.
October 26, 2019
Classic and riveting.
November 5, 2019
This play has not dated well.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews