Time and the Conways and Other Plays (I Have Been Here Before, An Inspector Calls, The Linden Tree)

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Comment on how well, in your view, these parents bring up their children. Who would you rather have as your father or mother? Note the significant difference, that Mr. Gradgrind sees his mistake and changes, very much for the better, while we have no reason to suppose that Mrs. Conway ever does this. At the other end of the scale is her future brother-in-law Gerald, a heartless Northern capitalist and another character borrowed from Chekhov, whose awfulness is a tribute to actor Adrian Scarborough. The play was revived on Broadway in a Roundabout Theatre production at the American Airlines Theatre. The play ran from 10 October 2017 to 26 November 2017. Directed by Rebecca Taichman, the cast featured Elizabeth McGovern (Mrs. Conway), Steven Boyer (Ernest), Gabriel Ebert (Alan), Anna Baryshnikov (Carol), Anna Camp (Hazel), Charlotte Parry (Kay Conway) and Matthew James Thomas (Robin). [7] [8] Adaptations [ edit ] There are some palpable ironic hits: a groaning laugh went up at the proclamation that there would be "no more boom and bust" in the economy. There's also a strong vein of feminism: this woman-filled play shows female expectations being systematically shrunk. "If I were a man," exclaims one of the sisters, "I'd want to be very important." Act 2 opens on the same room, with Kay still seated by the window. When Alan Conway enters and turns on the lights, it is apparent that the act is set in a different time: The room is redecorated, and there is a wireless set onstage. Kay and Alan are middle-aged. They greet each other and discuss Kay’s job as a tabloid film journalist in London. Kay reveals that she has given up writing novels and that she has had an unhappy affair with a married man. Alan, somewhat seedy and still a clerk, presents Kay with a gift: It is again her birthday, this time her fortieth.

The action we see is set in a family living-room (not the formal drawing-room where the guests are assembled). A game of charades is being played, and the six Conway children and their widowed mother appear as they find costume and props, and prepare their lines, before going (off-stage) into the drawing-room to perform the charade. In the course of this act, a number of their guests also appear: in fact the whole cast (save for Carol in Act Two) is on stage at some time in each of the three acts. Although Priestley gives information in the stage directions about the ages of all of the characters, this is not wholly clear to the audience: apart from Carol, all the Conway children are in their twenties, and they seem to have been born about a year apart: Alan is the eldest, then come Madge, Robin, Hazel, Kay and Carol. The English author J. B. Priestley wrote a number of dramas during the 1930s and 40s, which have come to be known as his Time Plays. [1] They are so called because each constructs its plot around a particular concept of time. In the plays, various theories of time become a central theatrical device of the play, the characters' lives being affected by how they react to the unusual temporal landscape they encounter. [2] So what are the ambitions they harbour? Kay says of Alan (p. 19) that he "has no ambition at all" and he agrees: "Not much", though Kay rightly suspects that he is deeper than he lets on: "I believe he has tremendous long adventures inside his head that nobody knows anything about". Madge has political and academic aspirations: she wants to inspire social change while pursuing a career as a scholar at the highest level. Robin has "all sorts of plans" (p. 30) though they are not so much plans as whimsical ideas; his practical planning has not gone beyond buying some smart clothes (in this he can be contrasted with Ernest, who is not yet wealthy, but spends little on his dress, while putting his money into buying a share in a paper-mill; p. 64). Hazel's aspirations are social; she is a noted local beauty and hopes to make an advantageous marriage (she explains this more fully in Act Three, but in Act One we see that for the moment she and Joan are simply looking for a good time). It is Kay whose ambition seems most difficult of fulfilment, as she wishes to be a famous novelist, but she has already done something about it, writing The Garden of Stars Judging from Hazel's quotation, this novel is literate if full of romantic clichés; it is not serious enough for Kay, who has torn up the manuscript. Carol's ambitions are not made clear in this act, but she seems, like Alan, very contented with life already.Remember to quote or refer to textual details. If you use quotation, set it out conventionally. And finally, say whether you like either or both of these works and why! The second act keeps the same room as its setting, but jumps forward to 1937 (which was the present day when the play was first performed) and Kay’s 40th birthday. The mood is bleak, a new war is approaching and this future has not been kind to the Conways. A BBC Radio 4 adaptation was directed by Sue Wilson and broadcast on 12 August 1994 (later re-broadcast on 23 May 2010 over BBC Radio 7). The cast included Marcia Warren as Mrs. Conway, Belinda Sinclair as Kay, John Duttine as Alan, Toby Stephens as Robin, Emma Fielding as Carol, Stella Gonet as Madge, Amanda Redman as Hazel, John McArdle as Ernest and Christopher Scott as Gerald. [12] The play works on the level of a universal human tragedy and a powerful portrait of the history of Britain between the Wars. Priestley shows how through a process of complacency and class arrogance, Britain allowed itself to decline and collapse between 1919 and 1937, instead of realizing the availability of immense creative and humanistic potential accessible during the post-war (theGreat War) generation. Priestley could clearly see the tide of history leading towards another major European conflict as he has his character Ernest comment in 1937 that they are coming to ‘the next war’.

They are separated by the whole of the inter-war period and a remarkable development in the lives of six grown children and their mother, mirroring the fortunes of their type, as the class system collapsed.

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Love-Obstructing Parents: Mrs Conway knowingly spoils a conversation between Gerald and Madge, derailing a growing attraction. Robin Conway, the younger son, his mother’s favorite and a loafer with no apparent talent. Robin is returning from World War I as the play begins. He is charming and good-looking and spends much of his time pursuing Joan Helford, to whom he is married and whom he subsequently abandons. He manipulates his mother, who gives him money, but he proves unable to help her when she faces financial difficulties. Some of the less attractive characters in Time and the Conways resemble others in Hard Times. This is certainly not intentional (on Priestley's part) save in the fact that certain common moral or personal failings are often shown in characters in fiction. Find sources: "Time and the Conways"– news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR ( September 2014) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) Time and the Conways was adapted in 1985 by BBC for television [11] with Claire Bloom as Mrs Conway, Phyllis Logan as Kay, Nicholas Le Prevost as Gerald, Geraldine James as Madge and Simon Shepherd as Robin. [ citation needed]

The first two characters we meet are Carol (who is about sixteen) and her elder sister, Hazel, who is notable for her beauty: they are discussing the charade they are about to perform, and we learn that today is Kay's birthday, and that Mr. Conway died by drowning some years ago. After a brief appearance by Alan, the eldest (Act Two; p. 58) of Mrs. Conway's children, Madge, the next eldest, arrives with information about a guest, who is to take part in the charade: this is Ernest Beevers, a business associate of Gerald Thornton; Gerald is a solicitor to whom Madge is attracted. Kay appears, to organize the charade, followed by her mother. This 1985 production from the BBC Drama Unit stays almost completely faithful to the text and with no incidental music of any kind, unsurprisingly has a filmed-play look and feel to it. This, though I think is to be commended for allowing the play to be viewed as the writer intended. The ensemble acting is excellent as we view the disintegration of this well-to-do family, whose wealth and social position can't protect them from the intrusive effects of human weakness, thwarted ambitions and bad choices. The play emerged from Priestley’s reading of J. W. Dunne’s book An Experiment with Timein which Dunne posits that all time is happening simultaneously; i.e., that past, present, future are one and that linear time is only the way in which human consciousness is able to perceive this. [3] Rupert Goold's ebullient production reveals a play of dramatic verve and shaky intellectualising. Set at the end of the First World War, the opening shows a middle-class, sister-dominated family behaving in ultra-period fashion. They squeak; they bounce up and down; they call people chumps and they say "golly!"; they are also jolly beastly to a "funny little man", a shy parvenu played with all-out bristle by Adrian Scarborough. Do say: Remember Daldry's Inspector Calls? I remember Daldry's Inspector Calls. It was in 1992, you know.Both texts are interested in politics in the work-place: in both industrial relations are an important secondary issue. As this is a play, the ages of the characters, in so far as these are important, are suggested by the appearance, speech and actions of the players. However, Priestley has given further information, either in the dialogue, or in the stage-directions to indicate the characters' ages. It may be helpful to students of the play to use this summary of all the information. ALAN: No . . . it’s hard to explain . . . suddenly like this . . . there’s a book I’ll lend you—read it in the train. But the point is, now, at this moment, or any moment, we’re only a cross-section of our real selves. What we really are is the whole stretch of ourselves, all our time, and when we come to the end of this life, all those selves, all our time, will be us—the real you, the real me.” (177) The play works on the level of a universal human tragedy and a powerful portrait of the history of Britain between the Wars. Priestley shows how through a process of complacency and class arrogance, Britain allowed itself to decline and collapse between 1919 and 1937, instead of realizing the availability of immense creative and humanistic potential accessible during the post-war (the Great War) generation. Priestley could clearly see the tide of history leading towards another major European conflict as he has his character Ernest comment in 1937 that they are coming to 'the next war'. Their conversation contrasts strongly with that of Madge and Gerald, who now come on stage. Madge and Gerald argue about the miners' strike in support of their campaign for nationalization. Though Madge and Gerald hold differing views they both enjoy this kind of heated political debate.

Priestley uses the idea to show how human beings experience loss, failure and the death of their dreams but also how, if they could experience reality in its transcendent nature, they might find a way out. The idea is not dissimilar to that presented by mysticism and religion that if human beings could understand the transcendent nature of their existence the need for greed and conflict would come to an end. In terms of the play's structure, then, first we see a promising situation; next, we see what it becomes; and, finally, as we wonder how and why things go wrong, we see that things are already less than perfect in the life of the seemingly happy family. Priestley was somewhat obsessed by time, and tended to believe in a cyclic time, in the way of Hinduism. His plays where this can be best noticed are Dangerous Corner and I Have Been Here Before, both of which I didn't like. But in "Time & the Conways" this is scarcely noticed, while the story of the family destroyed by time, which we can see through Kay's eyes in the second act, is quite moving. Only Alan's words, speaking of the circle whose center is God, point at a cyclical view of time. Mr. Gradgrind has a wife, for much of the story of Hard Times, but she never interferes in his "system" of bringing up his children. We know that Mr. Conway has very different ideas from his wife, and the children have not been brought up in ways that help them to develop their own best qualities. Rather, they have been forced to become what Mr. Gradgrind/Mrs. Conway want them to be, either accepting this and being unhappy, or rebelling against it, and still being unhappy.If he did, he gave himself a bit of an out, in Alan. Although it’s easy to come out the end of the third act, the end of the play, with a feeling of hopelessness from all the ironic optimism, there is a moment of genuine optimism embedded in the end of the second act. Of all the Conways, Alan is the only one who doesn’t seem miserable. He’s as subdued and reserved in 1937 as he is in 1919. Priestley wasn’t bold enough to have Alan proclaim that the next war really would set things straight, but he at least nodded to his own inability to see what was coming: Comment on the importance of the ideas of homes in the two works. This could be further extended by commenting on the importance, in each work, of the towns where the stories are set: grim industrial Coketown and middle-class suburban Newlingham. In 1984, the play was adapted for film by the Soviet studio Mosfilm and was directed by Vladimir Basov. It starred Rufina Nifontova as Mrs. Conway, Vladimir Basov Jr. as Ernest Beevers in youth, Vladimir Basov as Ernest Beevers at maturity and Margarita Volodina as Kay. [9] [10] Madge arrives, explaining that she has only come because she was in the neighbourhood, being interviewed for a job as headmistress of a girls' school. She insists that she has no connection with the person she once was, and dismisses Alan's attempt to contradict her: at the end of the act he will explain his ideas to Kay.