Dangerous Corner
Dangerous Corner
Theatre Royal, Glasgow
Neil Cooper
A shot in the dark and the shrill scream that begins J.B. Priestley's philosophical thriller don't tell the full story of something possessed with the airs and graces of a hokey drawing room whodunnit, but which ends up as a tortured treatise on human nature's power to deceive.
These attention-grabbing noises-off are themselves a theatrical double bluff, as they open out on to a post dinner party scene where the ladies of the extended Caplan clan are making small talk.
A cigarette box seems to carry more weight than anyone is letting on, and only when the gentlemen enter does revelation upon revelation pile up, alongside the much missed figure of the late Martin Caplan.
Martin was the social glue and a whole lot more besides of a publishing set steeped in the well-turned-out veneer of its own fiction. Sex, drugs, love and money are all in the mix, be it straight, gay, between husbands, wives and other part-time lovers. If only they'd managed to tune in to some dance music on the wireless, all involved would have remained blissfully suspicious of each other.
All this must have been pretty shocking when Priestley premiered his first stage drama back in 1932. This is something that's hard to recapture in Michael Attenborough's solid but hardly earth-shattering production for the Bill Kenwright organisation.
A handsome looking cast, led by Michael Praed as dashing bachelor Charles Stanton, nevertheless play it as straight as they can in a show where archness must be hard to resist. Only when the play lurches in on itself in its final moments do we see the potential for something darker, sexier and more self-destructive.
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