J. B. Priestley wrote Dangerous Corner in 1932 and the Cambridge Theatre Company’s revival reached Richmond’s Theatre on the Green nearly half a century later. The effect of this new view of times dimly remembered by some of us is astonishing like turning a corner to come face to face with a world that is both distanced and remote. At the same time it reminds us that "everything’s been done before” and that Priestley was in there  doing it highly successfully before some of our currently respected writers were born. In this way, the senior craftsman justifies his favourite “time continuum” theory in a way that might surprise even himself.

Curtain up on a blood-curdling scream and we are in Agatha Christie country where nothing is quite what it seems. The scream is the climax of  a radio play with the whole cast gathered round listening attentively in the dark. Director George Layton I think confuses the issue by updating the action to Boxing Day 1938. Why, I ask myself?  Anyway, the guest of honour, a best-selling novelist (a nicely pointed sketch in snob-set venom by Madeleine Newbury) uses the radio thriller to recall that the brother of her host, Robert Caplan, had committed suicide.

The lady then departs after observing brightly “Oh dear, have I dropped a brick?” She has, indeed, and the people involved peel strip after strip form their politely maintained social stances to reveal motives and actions as complex as anything o today’s scene. The dead man is revealed as a fascinating “rotter” with a power-lust, who used his physical attractions to make almost everyone, female and male, fall in love with him. And was it suicide?

It’s still great theatre which works, despite, as in this case, flat production and some disastrous miscasting – it’s kinder to draw a veil over Matthew Guinness’ performance as the potentially interesting Caplan. Jennifer Daniel as Freda is effectively brilliant in her blonde wig, and Ann Lynn contributes a beautifully contained performance of subtlety as the spinsterish Olwen Peek that shows us what an exciting revival this might have been.