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Dangerous Corner

by J.B. Priestly
article in SF Bay Guardian by Brad Rosenstein

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Truth or nonsense
Dangerous Corner plumbs timely depths

STEPHEN DALDRY'S brilliant recent
production of J.B. Priestley's An
Inspector Calls rescued the late British
playwright from obscurity, discovering
rich new subtexts in his seemingly passé
work. Teatro Shalom's artistic director,
David Gassner, is no Stephen Daldry,
but his company's production of
Priestley's 1932 melodrama Dangerous Corner strikes some very
apt chords.

At a party hosted by Robert (Lawrence Radecker) and his wife,
Freda (Gwyneth Richards), the partners and staff of Robert's
publishing firm chatter inconsequentially about the nature of truth
until the subject of Robert's late brother Martin crops up. An offhand
remark by the publishers' secretary, Olwen (Claudia Rosa), raises
new questions regarding Martin's suicide. Soon Robert's dogged
inquiries expose an ever widening circle of secrets, until every
character and relationship is tested and revealed to be other than it
appears.

Priestley explores a clever notion of the circularity of time in the
play's structure, but that concept is only given a slight nod in this
production's anachronistic costuming and set details. Although
resembling the more mature An Inspector Calls in its pattern of
revelations, Dangerous Corner is merely a parlor game of truth or
dare, and rather than attempting a Daldryesque revision, the
company plays the melodrama relatively straight. Despite the soap
opera disclosures and the dated British locutions, they actually pull
it off fairly well.

Dangerous Corner begins sedately but is soon tearing around
curves, complete with suspenseful reversals and cliff-hanger
curtain lines; the desire to know what happens next keeps the play
humming like a Rolls-Royce. The performances range from the
amateurish to the accomplished. Rosa does an excellent job as the
stalwart Olwen, somehow managing to make this humorless
woman intriguing. Richards navigates the stilted language with
consummate skill, giving Freda's dilemmas a naturalistic
accessibility, and David Acevedo uses his character's audacity to
introduce an edgy, contemporary spirit that hits the play like a
liberating breeze.

It's hard to tell how much of the production's stiffness is deliberate:
Gassner's staging is as rigid as a chessboard, but overall the
stylization is tentative and inconsistent. Actually, we don't need
directorial signposts to underscore the relevance of a drama in
which an inquisitor's brutal pursuit of the Truth, regardless of
consequences, finally prompts one character to ask, "Who's better
off because of this?"

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