To really dislike An Inspector Calls?

Ah we did a school trip. And there were lots of cheers too. They adored the show.

This.

I love it. And my students love it every year too - I mean really really love it.

I took DD to see it recently as she is studying it for GCSE but the school weren't doing a trip to the theatre for the tour. We appeared to be part of a very small handful not there in a school group. While the teens of the audience crumpled a lot of sweet wrappers and whispered a lot, they were still clearly engaged (cheering and gasping at parts) and were very enthusiastic at the end.

I think it's great that this can still be relatable these days and works so well for analysis across students of varying abilities.

Ooh ooh, I have a claim to fame about An Inspector Calls. When the National Theatre Production went on tour, they did a PR thing in each city asking for local people to audition as extras and I turned up at my local theatre and got chosen as one of the 12 extras. We had to dress in 1940s costumes, representing the audience of the time the play was written judging the attitudes of the Edwardian era.

I had to stand at various spots on the stage and watch the actors without moving, it was all a bit bizarre! And yes, at the end, the walls all came down exposing all the extras on a plinth and we all had to look out into the actual audience in a judgy way.

Brilliant experience! I still love that play.

I do get a bit sick of teaching it, but the kids totally get it, and get angry. My lot really identify with being the oppressed wc and so it at least manages to engage even the boys who don't give a flying fuck about literature. It's also the one they tend to cite if they break on through and choose A level. That or Macbeth. The poems.... not so much. And I'm sorry Eduqas, but your new batch.... fucking Daffodils? Seriously. Have a word with a teenager or two.

I love that Gove kept it on, when it's basically all about how not to be a tory.

Ex-teacher here, until last summer. I always enjoyed teaching it and never taught a class that didn’t love it.

Ooh good to know thank you! I'm gonna take my kids to it at Wimbledon. Sorry OP, your anti-AIC thread has stoked excitement so it's being inflicted on more unsuspecting DC!

Milward’s, sorry

Sheila thinks that life is easy for a girl if you are pretty, because that’s her experience as an upper class young woman. She doesn’t understand that for working class girls like Eva, it’s dangerous to be pretty. Sheila would not have reacted the way she does in Millard’s if Eva had been plain - she says this herself.

I love this play, and have seen about every version made, each one brings something different. I'm quite old now, didn't know it was studied in schools.
of course it's dated, but I just take that in the spirit of all old stories, such as Jeeves and Wooster, Agatha Christie etc.
I think the fact that she was pretty rather overlooks the fact that she had spirit, in organising the strike, with other chances she might have gone far.
it resonates how when the father phones the hospital to see if there is a female suicide, and is told there isn't, he is quite ready to go back to his old ways. Just how we are continually told 'lessons must be learned', and they never are. Things never change.
it would interesting to see a modern version of it to suit these times we are living in now.

@Badknitter - fyi there's no interval. It's 1 hr 50 min. Just in case you need to know. I would have been going tonight, but I find the seats in that theatre unbearable close! We went elsewhere a couple of weeks ago.

The ‘pretty’ reference to Eva is really important. It makes her vulnerable because she is noticed - by Mr Birling, by Sheila (who gets her sacked in a moment of jealousy), by Gerald and Eric who exploit her, by Alderman Meggarty, who tries to exploit her. Sheila is also described as ‘pretty’ - for a girl of her class, it was an advantage; for a girl of Eva’s class, it was the opposite.

The Stephen Daldry version is touring at the moment, I’m taking my teenager to see it tonight as it’s a set text for them for GCSEs. A lot of their class have seen it already, I’m hoping it helps with the understanding of the text.

Eva’s attractiveness is important in her involvement with Sheila, Gerald and Eric and then, through her pregnancy, with Mrs Birling. Gerald and Eric as rich young men about town would be in a position to exploit a very attractive lower class woman.

For a dead white male Priestley does a great job of showing how appallingly men treat women, and how being pretty can actually make that worse. When Sheila talks about how Alderman Megartty treats young women, who are lucky to leave his office with a torn blouse, there are shades of Me Too, and that wasn't lost on my recent classes. Mr Birling even says how clothes are more important to women than men and link to their self-worth, then we see the disastrous impact of that on Sheila's behaviour.

I can't think how you get the idea that Priestley's point is that it wouldn't have been as bad if Eva was less attractive. It's just not there.

I enjoy teaching it. It's not subtle, no, but it's accessible, does enable more able kids to flex their muscles and also challenges some preconceptions in a way that remains relevant today.

And if you want me to learn new texts to teach you are going to have to give me time to do that. At the moment, behaviour and pastoral issues are taking up all my time and someone telling me I had to stop teaching AIC because it's a 'shame ' they also did it in 1978 would just about send me over the edge.

I saw more people around me who talk the talk, and might even "walk the walk" professionally and/or publicly. But actually, in their personal lives and where it directly affects them, their "values" go out of the window..

Agree,
There is an awful lot of virtue signalling out there

I saw the Stephen Daldry production. with the set that set that destroys itself,a couple of weeks ago with DS (GCSE student). I did it for O level in 1987! (In fact, all bar one of the texts that I did are the same as DS'. The difference is we did Great Expectations, DD is doing A Christmas Carol).

It's a blunt tool as social commentary, but I think it works well for 14-16 year olds who generally have a very naive, black & white view of the world.

Yes! It all crumpled and fell apart like a dolls house. Then got put back together. Coup de theatre-tastic!

I don’t like it but I loathe and despise Of Mice and Men.

Can’t really explain why - it’s just a really visceral and violent feeling towards it.

My DS is doing it for GCSE and I keep meaning to watch the drama with him so he can talk to me about it. He likes it a lot. I have never read it. This thread suggests I should avoid the BBC production. Darn.

Bank 😂

Ok. If you’re finding me rude/unpleasant, I’ll withdraw.

Enjoy your thread and the bang holiday!

Is this the one where the set more or less disintegrated (obviously symbolic) around the characters during the course of the play?