Most of theatreland's long runners have a dismal air about them, as if nobody can quite remember why the production merited being in the West End in the first place. Take a hit from elsewhere and plonk it in the commercial sector and all too often all the energy leaches out of it.
The exception is Stephen Daldry's production of JB Priestley's classic 1945 thriller, which pitches the Edwardian mindset of the comfortable Birling family against the brave new post-world war vision of Inspector Goole.
First seen at the National in 1992, and since then an almost permanent fixture in the West End, Daldry's production returns after a six-month absence in spine-tinglingly good shape.
Daldry's vision here owes a great deal to designer Ian MacNeil, whose large Edwardian doll's house, precariously perched amid the smoking rubble of post-Blitz Britain, provides the visual centrepiece of a production that probes insistently at the questions: what do we mean by society? What are our individual responsibilities within society?
Back in 1992 the Birlings' callous look-after-yourself mentality, their casual indifference and cruelties that lead to the death of a young woman, seemed like an indictment of the previous 13 years of Tory rule. Now, when the lights are raised and Niall Buggy's Inspector Goole points the finger at the audience, we have nobody but ourselves to blame. This is not a comfortable evening.
Buggy's Goole is an intricate study of a man whose strong passion comes cloaked in the rational and cool. Diane Fletcher's Mrs Birling, for whom the word "impertinence" is an essential piece of vocabulary, is his perfect foil, and Emma Gregory is superb as the daughter who suddenly sees the dirt that lurks beneath her white petticoats. But it is the production - lushly operatic, yet hard as steel - that grabs you by the throat and won't let you go. Long may it do so.
Until March. Box office: 020-7839 4401.
