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Inspector Announces Final West End Closure, 1 Jun

Stephen Daldry's multi award-winning production of JB Priestley's An Inspector Calls has announced its last-ever performance. One of the West End’s longest-running dramas, An Inspector Calls, now at the Playhouse Theatre, will close for good on 1 June 2002. It had been booking up to 29 June.

The production has only been playing at the Playhouse since 20 September 2001, but it has a long history before that. Now renowned internationally for his film directorial debut with Billy Elliott, Stephen Daldry first mounted his neo-expressionistic reworking of Priestley's classic 1946 thriller at the National Theatre a decade ago. It had subsequent seasons at the West End's Aldwych Theatre and on Broadway.

The hit production is probably most closely associated with the Garrick Theatre, where it ran for nearly six years from – October 1995 to April 2001 – before taking a summer break last year and then re-opening in its current home, once again to strong reviews.

In An Inspector Calls, the comfortable and complacent middle class world of the Birlings is thrown into chaos when a mysterious police inspector arrives at the family home one night to enquire about the death of a young local girl. In total, the acclaimed production won 19 major awards – including three Oliviers and four Tonys - in London and New York.

An Inspector Calls currently stars Niall Buggy, Edward Peel and Dianne Fletcher.

- by Terri Paddock

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