I Have Been Here Before by J.B. Priestley

Conversations quickly deconstruct into explications and explanations, and the majority of the characters feel as if they are there to outline Görtler’s/Priestley’s thinking. Part of the problem is that Priestley’s philosophical interest is so overtly explored and his characters so obviously vassals for opposing arguments. And his theme – determinism vs indeterminism – is as old as the hills, or as old as the theatres of Athens at any rate, and fails to engage a twenty-first century audience. But whereas in An Inspector Calls Priestley unveils the true guilt of the Birlings’ situation with stylish wit and a mounting horror, in I Have Been Here Before, all is telegraphed from the beginning. It’s a structure – omniscient stranger performs social experiment on unfamiliar but intimately connected strangers – that Priestley would use again in An Inspector Calls. Over the course of three acts, Halsted’s Görtler pokes and probes the motivations and misgivings of his fellow guests, angering them and upsetting them with his theories about the circular nature of time and the autonomy we have over our own destiny. Their guests for the weekend are the single schoolteacher Mr Farrant (Daniel Souter) and the wealthy Mr and Mrs Ormund (David Schaal and Alexandra Dowling). Despite the best efforts of Anthony Biggs’ new production at the Jermyn Street Theatre, it never achieves more than a transient magnetism.Ī mysterious German, Doctor Görtler (Edward Halsted) arrives at a remote Yorkshire Inn, where the ageing landlord (Keith Parry) and his widowed daughter (Vicky Binns) scrub tables and sober up the local bar flies.

One of Priestley’s three ‘time’ plays, exploring his fascination with the physics and philosophy of time, it draws on compelling – if dated – material but presents it awkwardly and inelegantly. His somewhat clumsily titled I Have Been Here Before has only received a handful of revivals since its premiere in 1937, but for good reason. Ask them to name another and they probably won’t be able to, which is bizarre really, considering Priestley was a notably prolific playwright whose work enjoyed great popular acclaim during his lifetime. Ask someone to name a JB Priestley play, and they’ll instantly say An Inspector Calls, probably because they studied it at GCSE.

I Have Been Here Before by J.B. Priestley