January 12, 2002: Priestley, Dangerous Corner
Garrick Theatre
Priestley’s first solo play (he collaborated on the stage revision of Good Companions). Opened in London in May 1932. A New York production opened five months later with a somewhat rewritten text (see the essay in the program on the text of the present production by the director, Lori Sansour). The production originated at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, about which good things are frequently heard.
The keynote of this play is the proverbial phrase “Let sleeping dogs lie,” reiterated by more than one member of the dramatis personae. A firestorm of mutual accusations, manifestations of truth, and uncovering of lies begins to occur as this party of publishers and an author attempting to deal with the death of Martin, a brother, brother-in-law, lover, friend, and enemy of one or another of them. At a certain point early in Act I, when some unsettling facts begin to emerge, someone suggests that it would be better just “to let sleeping dogs lie.” They fail to take this advice, with the resulting uncovering of dark secrets, and all that follows. The author, Maud Mockridge, an American and a rather weird person, takes the hint and leaves, allowing the others, isolated in this large-windowed contemporary house in the woods (part of Sansour’s careful updating of the play to our own period), free reign to pursue the truth. Martin, it turns out, did not kill himself, as the inquest on his death concluded; he was accidentally killed in a scuffle with Olwen Peel, a lovelorn young woman who went to his isolated cottage to ask him if he had really taken the money… The details of the intrigue are very skillfully plotted out by the author but are too involved to summarize here. The play is structured as follows. End of Act I: Olwen suddenly admits she killed Martin (intermission here); end of Act II: all the secrets are finally out, but at the heavy cost of destroyed marriages, wrecked friendships, and a publishing firm likely to go under. Act III: a revisiting of the opening sequence of Act I; when we get to the point where the proverbial advice is forthcoming, this time it is followed; the secrets, lies, hidden guilt, and all the rest of it stay secret, and this inbred society of young adults remains intact.
The program note written by Priestley’s son, Tom, explains that Priestly had a long-term interest in experimenting with “Time,” “splitting it into two to show what might’ve happened.” What he doesn’t explain is the mordant social commentary that arises out of this climactic revisiting of the situation. We are to understand, it seems, that it is the resolute glossing over, or downright refashioning, of the truths of human relationships that provides the adhesive that holds a fragile, threatened society together. The program for another play I’ve seen this week quotes T. S. Eliot as saying, “Human beings cannot bear very much reality.” Disallowing the context in which Eliot made that observation (wh