An Inspector Calls (Heinemann Plays For 14-16 ) (original 1945; edition 1992)

The film version is an absolute pip, with a great part (the title role) for the wonderful Alastair Sim. The play itself is a little lumpy as it loftily surveys one member of a family after another and finds each more wretched than the last. ( )

I read this play knowing nothing about it other than it involved a police inspector calling in on a well-to-do family dinner party and asking about a crime. What preconceptions I had led me to consider the story to be like Agatha Christie’s stories.

I was wrong. This play was much more serious and deals with the abuse of vulnerable people in society by the better off.

This play was, and is, a wake up call for any of us who look down on people less well-off than ourselves, or who are rude and arrogant to others.

While today’s society and its greater awareness of human rights and labour protection laws date the play and prevent some of the blatant abuse described, there are still valuable lessons for society in the three acts of this work. ( )

The Heinemann Plays series offers contemporary drama and classic plays in durable classroom editions. Many have large casts and an equal mix of boy and girl parts. In this play an inspector interrupts a party to investigate a girl's suicide, and implicates each of the party-makers in her death.