An Ambitious Performance Strikes a Modern Chord

The Sherman Playhouse, a true community theater of limited means, is ambitious. “Salome,” “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie,” “Gaslight” and “Enchanted April” have been produced there in the last two years. But without Stephen Daldry, most famous for “Billy Elliott,” I doubt even they would have considered “An Inspector Calls.”Arguably the most famous of J. B. Priestly’s plays, “Inspector” is a hoary melodrama that Daldry reimagined and stood on its head at London’s National Theatre in 1992. The story is fairly simple: In Edwardian 1912, the Birling family, led by Arthur and Sybil, gathers to celebrate the engagement of their daughter, Sheila, to Gerald, son of another, better connected mercantile family. Son Eric Birling drinks too much and makes silly remarks. Edna, the maid, serves, ignored like the non-person she is in the Birlings’ world.The evening is interrupted by the arrival of Inspector Goole – yes, Goole – who is investigating the suicide of a young working woman down on her luck. He prods each character to reveal their knowledge of the dead woman and how each may have contributed to her suicide. At the end of the act, Goole delivers a warning that the affluent will either change their ways or suffer the rising of the poor. In the second act, Gerald raises doubts that Goole is who he claimed to be and that a young woman even died. Relieved, the senior Birlings recover their aplomb, convincing themselves that even if a woman had died their actions were just and honorable. Only Sheila and Eric are appalled and deeply changed by Goole’s visit. But all are jolted at the end, when Arthur receives a telephone call that suggests precognition and hurls the woman’s death into reality again.Director Laura Gilbert has shaped her first Sherman outing with straightforward assurance in a playable set she designed.Robin Frome makes a suitably pompous, self-satisfied Arthur, even if he was not line-perfect. The reliable Katherine Almquist was equally smug, if a bit too mannered and cliched as Sybil. Alex Echevarria, an artist by day, played Goole in a trench coat (all that London fog, of course) and spoke in an almost robotic monotone. (He is a catalyst, after all, and is not written to exhibit any emotion until his exit speech.)Good were the young actors. Quinn Uniacke (Sheila) was charming, haughty until faced with her culpability, then contrite and changed. David Fejes (Gerald), recently out of high school, showed remarkable promise and presence, even if his eyes were too made-up for the small theater. Best, however, was Ben Grinberg (Eric), a recent Penn graduate. He was drunken, louche, pouty, childish by turns, but when he realized his role in the suicide, he was chastened and changed like his sister. He is right to plan a career in acting. “An Inspector Calls,” for all its sometimes turgid script and social preaching, is fascinating in spite of itself. “An Inspector Calls” plays weekends at The Sherman Playhouse through Oct. 1. Call 860-354-3622 or visit www.shermanplayers.org.