REVIEW: Dangerous Corner – at the Festival Theatre, Malvern, from Monday, November 10 until Saturday, November 15, 2014.

“LIFE has got a lot of dangerous corners” claimed one of the characters in this tale of deception and duplicity, and then joined in the free-for-all barrage of confessions and character assassinations that ensued.

Dangerous Corner is JB Priestley’s first play and although set in the early 1930s it is a timeless masterpiece of writing. Cleverly constructed it is, nevertheless, far from complex in spite of all the characters having the most complicated of lives and relationships.

It’s a confessional thriller that centres round a chance remark as cigarettes are offered to friends and colleagues from a publishing company following a dinner party at a country home. Not so much a skeleton in the cupboard comes tumbling out – there’s a complete crypt full here!

Attention grabbing at the outset, having begun with a gunshot in the dark from a play on the radio, a tangled web of lies and deception is gloriously and unceremoniously unravelled in a cross-examination that would have done the Old Bailey justice.

A brother and fellow director had apparently committed suicide. But did he really shoot himself?

Recollections of a musical cigarette box set off minds and soon there is no smokescreen to hide away from the secrets that inevitably spill around.

It’s a small but extremely strong and talented cast of just seven. The considerably experienced Michael Praed charmingly leads the way as the suave but cynically calculating Charles Stanton, while Colin Buchanan, once one half of television’s hugely popular Dalziel and Pascoe, is the impressive main man of books, Robert Caplan, who heads the far from informal interrogation into his brother’s death. It beats charades!

Quality too from Cranford’s Finty Williams (Freda Caplan) and Emmerdale’s Kim Thomson whose ‘tortured’ Olwen Peel is the perfect catalyst for all the angst that is unleashed in Priestley’s absorbing and intricately woven plot.

Twist and turns, shocks and intrigue, and a few lighter moments too, as Michael Attenborough’s directing has the action rattling along at a good pace to ensure quality entertainment.

The set and costumes are top notch too and certainly create that 1930s aura.

Although this is an entertaining ‘time play’ from Priestley there is almost that feeling, when we get to the repeat scene finale, of ‘what was the point?’ At the end it might be argued we had gone nowhere – the family and friends who had been involved in acrimonious outbursts were not going to change what had happened and life would simply go on as before.

But that’s the secret. Life has got a lot of dangerous corners should secrets be secrets no more.