JB Priestley loved rolling the clock backwards and forwards. Time and the Conways, which bats a family's fortunes back and forth between the end of the first world war and the beginning of the second, is the most radical of his psychological-chronological conflations. It matches the analysis of Dr Jung to the time-keeping of Dr Who.
Furthermore, Priestley could never resist putting his plots on hold to deliver a staged seminar. The topic of this play's lecture is the theory of the aviation pioneer, JW Dunne - that we perceive time as linear in our conscious state, but as holistic and simultaneous when not thinking about it too hard.
Priestley applies this to the standard three-act 1930s boulevard entertainment, so that act two of Time and the Conways runs concurrently with act one (only in a different spatial dimension), while acts three and one are simultaneous. All that considered, you may conclude that the play finishes before it begins, and there is no need to go to the theatre at all - except that it would be a shame to miss some very fine acting.
The play is a grand ensemble piece of Shavian ambition, and director Braham Murray orchestrates the performances brilliantly. Paramount among these is the imperious Gabrielle Drake as the feckless tyrant, Mrs Conway. She is superb in the outer two acts as a flighty retired singer, callously dispensing capricious measures of theatrical affection among offspring, and truly scary in act two as a pinched, crabby phantom of her former self.
There's great work also from Sarah Kirkham, Rachel Pickup, Naomi Frederick and Jessica Lloyd as her daughters, who, like a group of flapper-era Spice Girls, line up respectively as Literary, Flirty, Baby and Bluestocking. Laurence Mitchell is quietly impressive as intellectual Alan, the only Conway who doesn't like making a noise; his brother Robin (Adam James) compensates by making enough for them both. A sensitive interpretation of a rather sanctimonious play.
Until January 19. Box office: 0161-833 9833.
