Donmar Warehouse

Thanks to the freakish success of the National Theatre’s 1992 production of An Inspector Calls – it’s still touring to this day – JB Priestley is largely destined to be remembered as a one-play playwright.  And to be fair, that’s still an amazing legacy. But away from the burningly intense social interrogation of Inspector Goole, Priestly has plenty to offer, including When We are Married, a somewhat dated but thoroughly delightful social comedy that stands out from the period pack by sheer weight of northernness.  Timothy Sheader’s twinkle-eyed revival finds a nice balance between updating the play and surrendering to its innate charms. His production begins with cynical charwoman Mrs Northrop (Janice Connolly) greeting us through the fourth wall as if we were a pantomime audience before launching into Gracie Fields’ 1938 banger ‘The Biggest Aspidistra in the World’, a song that (as far as I can tell) has nothing to do with When We are Married beyond being released in the same year. Nonetheless, it clearly inspired Peter McKintosh’s delightful set, a dazzlingly yellow arts and crafts drawing room dominated by a preposterously huge potted plant. And on the more modern side, Beyoncé’s ‘Single Ladies’ plays out at what is possibly the single funniest point in the entire play for Beyoncé’s ‘Single Ladies’ to play out.  Notoriously bluff Yorkshireman Priestley didn’t go in much for either subtext or subplots, and part of the joy of When We are Married is that it’s basically...