[For the remainder of the year, my San Jose and Peninsula theater reviews will be posted on Talkin’ Broadway with only introductions to those reviews on this site]

Please continue to https://www.talkinbroadway.com/page/regional/sanjose/sj260.html for full review.

“Don’t build walls.  He’ll only tear them down,” one member of the Birling family declares to the others.  This reproach directly refers to the futility of hiding information that will come out anyway, but it also speaks to the divide that the privileged class has erected against the less affluent, including the inspector in question.  The year is 1912, and many in England already sense the impending threat of what would become World War I because of regional conflicts on the continent.

The engrossing An Inspector Calls follows in the English tradition of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express and Then There Were None, in which all of those in the collected party are shown to have motive to wish the victim disappeared or dead.  Like those novels, this plot line becomes predictable, and the viewer can anticipate the pins falling and begin to guess the connection of each character to the victim.

But when it seems that the tale is told, audience members may look at their watches and see that there are still 20 minutes left in the estimated run time of two-and-a-half hours.  That remaining time conceals the twist that makes An Inspector Calls distinctive and ultimately satisfying.

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An Inspector Calls, written by J. B. Priestley is produced by City Lights Theater Company and plays on its stage at 529 South 2^nd Street, San Jose, CA through October 20, 2024.