Leave it to director Cate Caplin to take a play I had previously found to be heavy-handed and preachy, J.B. Priestley’s An Inspector Calls, and transform it into something quite magical at Theatre 40.

 It’s the evening of April 5, 1912, and the wealthy Birling clan have gathered to celebrate the engagement of daughter Sheila (Katyana Rocker-Cook) to the suavely handsome Gerald Croft (Isaac W. Jay), a wedding that will unite not only the bloodlines of Sheila’s industrialist father Arthur Birling (David Hunt Stafford) and Gerald’s equally moneyed progenitor but their considerable fortunes as well.

Equally thrilled by the match is Sheila’s class-conscious mother Sybil (Diana Angelina), not the least because Arthur and Sybil’s male offspring Eric (Monty Renfrow) seems unlikely to take the Birling family business to the next level the way Gerald most certainly will.

And things are going quite swimmingly indeed until, as Priestley’s title leads us to expect, an inspector calls.

The police officer in question introduces herself as Inspector Goole (Mouchette van Helsdingen), and she has popped by to inform the assembled elite that a young woman named Eva Smith has drunk a bottle of disinfectant and died, and as the evening progresses in real time, it becomes clear that Arthur, Sybil, Sheila, Eric, and Gerald have all had dealings of one kind or another with the deceased.

The improbability of Inspector Goole knowing every single detail of each family member’s connection to Eva beginning when Arthur fired the then factory worker for daring to lead a strike demanding higher wages is just one reason An Inspector Calls had turned me off when I watched the play’s 2015 small screen adaption several years back, and that was just the start of a series of coincidences I found hard to swallow.

Not so at Theatre 40, where the haunting presence of Eva’s ghost (Isabella DiBernardino), a Caplin innovation, takes us into Twilight Zone territory almost from the get-go and prepares us for the shocker Priestley has in store for us in the play’s final seconds.

Also, by casting van Helsdingen as a British police Inspector years before the first woman achieved that position, Caplin makes her sudden arrival all the more mysterious and even surreal, though other than changing “he” to “she” when referring to Inspector Goole, a character usually played by a male actor, director Caplin hasn’t altered Priestley’s words in the slightest.

Finally, by giving the entire play a smidgen of drawing room comedy edge, it no longer feels like a didactic lecture on the evils of capitalism, though given our country’s current state of affairs, The Inspector Calls’ message is more relevant than ever.

Clad in an all-business pre-WWI suit and wide-brimmed black hat, van Helsdingen comes across rather like a stern English nanny (think Mary Poppins minus Disney’s spoonful of sugar) making it her business to chastise the bad’uns in her charge, and I loved every minute of her menacing presence in the Birling home.

 Supporting performances are uniformly spot-on, from Stafford’s pompous Arthur to Angelina’s brittle Sybil to Jay’s dashing Gerald to Renfrow’s lost child of an Eric to Rocker-Cook’s Sheila, whose growth from spoiled rich girl to socially aware young woman makes her the conscience of the play.

Add to that the otherworldly presence of the exquisite DiBernardino and Caplin’s decision to give assistant stage manager Quinn DeVries a beefed-up role as Birling maid Edna and you’ve got a crème-de-la-crème cast if there ever was one.

 Last but not least, An Inspector Calls’ stunning production design by Jeff G. Rack (set), Derrick McDaniel (lighting), Michael Mullen (costumes), Judi Lewin (hair, wigs, and makeup), and Nick Foran (sound) gives L.A.’s premier regional theaters a run for their money albeit on a much smaller scale.

An Inspector Calls is produced by Stafford. Nikki Alday is stage manager. Arezu Tavakoli takes over the role of Eva beginning December 4.

I went into An Inspector Calls filled with trepidation, wondering if Cate Caplin could manage to make Priestley’s play work in a way I thought impossible.

I needn’t have worried. As was the case with 2022’s Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner and Becky’s New Car earlier this year, An Inspector Calls is Theatre 40 at its absolute best.

Theatre 40, 241 S. Moreno Dr., Beverly Hills.
www.Theatre40.org

–Steven Stanley
November 23, 2025
Photos: Gabriel Tejeda-Benitez

Visit www.theatreinla.com/nowplayingrs.php for a review roundup of what’s now playing in theaters around Los Angeles.

Tags: J.B. Priestley, Los Angeles Theater Review, Theatre 40