Nuffield Theatre, Southampton

Tuesday 24^th to Saturday 28^th January 2006

The show played to consistently good audiences throughout the week and was enjoyed by all who saw it.

J. B. Priestley - The Playwright

J. B. Priestley was born on September 13th 1894 in Bradford. His mother died when he was two and he was in turn cared for by his grandmother and stepmother. His father was a schoolteacher who encouraged his son to enter the wool business when he was a teenager. In 1914, he enlisted in the army; after the war, Priestley attended Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and started writing for the Cambridge Review. During the twenties, Priestley struggled to make his name as a writer. He wrote articles for numerous publications, including The Times Literary Supplement, as well as books of criticism and novels. Yet it was not until The Good Companion was published in 1929 that he became a well known literary figure. It was to be both a blessing and a curse. The book's success provided him with financial security. However, this multi-faceted tale of Yorkshire life was to cement his reputation with the critics as a sentimental populist, not a serious artist. His first original play was Dangerous Corner (1932) which only survived after five performances when Priestley intervened financially. Among his many plays, his other best known works are Time and the Conways (1937) When We are Married (1938) and An Inspector Calls (1947).

J.B.Priestley - On Playing a Photographer

"Once I had to do some acting of a sort in the West End, for about ten performances. This was not a publicity stunt but an attempt to save a farcical comedy, When We are Married, that had just opened. Frank Pettingell, who played the comic lead, a drunken West Riding photographer, was injured in a motor accident; so Basil Dean, a man not easily denied, rushed me on as a drunken photographer, at least a part not beyond my physical and mental range. I cannot say if I was a good or bad actor, but I certaily knew my own lines, never fluffed or dried, and duly got my laughs... Probably because I was not really an actor, I found it all curiously elusive, frustrating, unrewarding. And to paint one's face after an early lunch, all for the benefit of matinee audiences waiting for the tea they had ordered, was horrible."