Daldry’s Inspector Calls Forward End Date, 13 Mar

Stephen Daldry‘s multi award-winning production of An Inspector Calls has brought forward its closing date at Wyndham’s Theatre. It transferred there for a three-month stint on 3 December 2009 – having already run for two months in its current London incarnation at the Novello Theatre.

An Inspector Calls will now finish on 13 March 2010, a week earlier than previously scheduled (See News, 4 Nov 2009), in order to make way for the transfer of Avenue Q from the Gielgud Theatre, where the puppet musical will be succeeded by the new Broadway revival of Hair (See Today’s Other News).

Daldry first mounted his neo-expressionistic reworking of JB Priestley’s classic 1946 thriller at the National Theatre more than a decade ago. It had subsequent seasons at the West End’s Aldwych Theatre and on Broadway. It returned to the West End and ran at the Garrick Theatre for nearly six years from – October 1995 to April 2001 – before taking a summer break last year and then re-opening on 20 September 2001 at the West End’s Playhouse Theatre, where it closed on 11 May 2002 (See News, 29 Apr 2002).

With those seasons and extensive touring, Daldry’s production has clocked up well over 4,000 performances worldwide to date and reportedly holds the record as the longest-running play revival in history.

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 has won 19 major awards – including three Oliviers and four Tonys – in London and New York.

The production is designed by Ian MacNeil with lighting by Rick Fisher and music by Stephen Warbeck. The current cast is led by Nicholas Woodeson as the Inspector, alongside David Roper, Sandra Duncan, Marianne Oldham, Robin Whiting, Timothy Watson and Elizabeth Ross.