Time and the Conways is a British play written by J. B. Priestley in 1937 illustrating J. W. Dunne's Theory of Time through the experience of a moneyed Yorkshire family, the Conways, over a period of nineteen years from 1919 to 1937. Widely regarded as one of the best of Priestley's Time Plays, a series of pieces for theatre which played with different concepts of Time (the others including I Have Been Here Before, Dangerous Corner and An Inspector Calls),[1] it continues to be revived in the UK regularly.[2]
Time and the Conways is in three acts. The first act is set in the Conway house in 1919 on the night of the birthday of one of the daughters, Kay. Act Two moves to the same night in 1937 and is set in the same room in the house. Act Three then returns to 1919, seconds after Act One left off.
In the first Act we meet the Conway family, Mrs Conway, her daughters Kay, Hazel, Madge and Carol and her sons Alan and Robin. Three other characters appear: Gerald, a solicitor; Joan, a young woman in love with Robin; and Ernest, a young, ambitious entrepreneur of a lower social class. Act One's atmosphere is one of festivity as the family celebrates the end of the War and look forward to great future of fame, prosperity and fulfilled dreams. In a pensive moment when Kay is left alone on stage she seems to slip into a reverie and has a vision of the future.
Act Two plunges us into the shattered lives of the Conways exactly eighteen years later. Gathering in the same room where they were celebrating in Act One we see how their lives have failed in different ways. Robin has become a dissolute travelling salesman, estranged from his wife Joan, Madge has failed to realise her socialist dreams, Carol is dead, Hazel is married to the sadistic but wealthy Ernest. Kay has succeeded to a certain extent as an independent woman but has not realised her dreams of novel writing. Worst of all, Mrs Conway's fortune has been squandered, the family home is to be sold and the children's inheritance is gone. As the Act unfolds resentments and tensions explode and the Conways are split apart by misery and grief. Only Alan, the quietest of the family, seems to possess a quiet calm. In the final scene of the Act, Alan and Kay are left on stage and, as Kay expresses her misery Alan suggests to her that the secret of life is to understand its true reality – that the perception that Time is linear and that we have to grab and take what we can before we die is false. If we can see Time as eternally present, that at any given moment we are seeing only 'a cross section of ourselves,' then we can transcend our suffering and find no need to hurt or have conflict with other people.
Act Three returns us to 1919 and we see how the seeds of the downfall of the Conways were being sown even then. Ernest is snubbed by Hazel and Mrs Conway, Gerald's budding love for Madge is destroyed by the snobbery of Mrs Conway in another moment of social arrogance, Alan is rejected by Joan who becomes betrothed to Robin. As the children gather at the end of the play for Mrs. Conway to foretell their future, Kay has a moment of memory of the vision of Act Two we have seen unfold. Disturbed, she steps out of the party and the play ends with Alan promising that he will be able to tell her something in the future which will help her.
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'.
Thus Time and the Conways operates on many different levels – a political history of Britain between the wars, a universal tragedy, a family romance and a metaphysical examination of Time. As such it is one of Priestley's most accomplished and many-layered works for the stage, combining as it does an extremely accessible naturalistic style, heavily tinged with dramatic irony, with a network of sophisticated ideas and insights, which combine to make it one of his most popular plays.
The play emerged from Priestley's reading of J. W. Dunne's book An Experiment with Time in 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]
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.
The late Googie Withers starred as Mrs. Conway in a Chichester Festival Theatre production.[14] Priestley – with whom she was friendly – came to the opening night. When the young woman sitting next to him in the theatre, and not realising who he was, commented she did not really understand what it was all about, he replied: "Neither do I, and I wrote the bloody thing!" During World War II, Googie Withers starred in the original production of They Came to a City.[15] She played the same role in the film version.[16]
Related Research Articles
An Inspector Calls is a play written by English dramatist J. B. Priestley, first performed in the Soviet Union in 1945 and at the New Theatre in London the following year. It is one of Priestley's best-known works for the stage and is considered to be one of the classics of mid-20th century English theatre. The play's success and reputation were boosted by a successful revival by English director Stephen Daldry for the National Theatre in 1992 and a tour of the UK in 2011–2012.
John Boynton Priestley was an English novelist, playwright, screenwriter, broadcaster and social commentator.
Una O'Connor was an Irish-born American actress who worked extensively in theatre before becoming a character actress in film and in television. She often portrayed comical wives, housekeepers and servants. In 2020, she was listed at number 19 on The Irish Times list of Ireland's greatest film actors.
Gerald Robert Flood was a British actor of stage and television.
Sheila Susan White was an English film, television and stage actress.
Ursula Jean McMinn, better known as Ursula Jeans, was an English film, stage, and television actress.
Irene Lilian Brodrick, Countess of Midleton was a British stage and screen actress of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s and also a novelist.
Picnic is a 1953 play by William Inge. The play was premiered at the Music Box Theatre, Broadway, on 19 February 1953 in a Theatre Guild production, directed by Joshua Logan, which ran for 477 performances.
Isabel Jeans was an English stage and film actress known for her roles in several Alfred Hitchcock films and her portrayal of Aunt Alicia in the 1958 musical film Gigi.
When We Are Married is a comedy by the English dramatist, J. B. Priestley, written in 1934. It was first performed in London at the St. Martin's Theatre, London on 11 October 1938, and transferred to the larger Prince's Theatre in March 1939 and ran until 24 June of that year.
Conway Tearle was an American stage actor who went on to perform in silent and early sound films.
Ethel Coleridge was an English actress, best known for her roles in the original Aldwych farces in the 1920s and 1930s.
Frederick Leister, born Frederick Charles Holloway, was an English actor. He began his career in musical comedy, and after serving in the First World War he played character roles in modern West End plays and in classic drama. He appeared in more than 60 films between 1922 and 1961.
Gerald Douglas Savory was an English writer and television producer specialising in comedies.
Edward Ernest Butcher was a British actor, on stage from 1935, and with many film and TV appearances. He was the second husband of the actress Muriel George, and stepfather to her son, the critic John Davenport.
Gerald Leslie Lawrence was a British actor and manager.
Alexander Mervyn Archdale was a British actor, manager and theatre producer. He had a very long career in both the theatre and in film, stretching from the 1930s to the 1980s. He spent the latter part of his life and career in Australia.
Eileen Erskine was an English actress from Nottingham who was active in film mainly in the 1940s when she appeared in This Happy Breed (1944) and Great Expectations (1946). Her theatre work included the original West End production of J. B. Priestley's Time and the Conways in 1937; and on Broadway she was in Faithfully Yours, in 1951. Her television appearances included BBC TV's The Pallisers in 1974 Her autobiography, Scenes from a Life, was published posthumously.
Richard Warner was an English actor. He appeared in more than one hundred films from 1938 to 1988. Also active on stage, his theatre work included Gerald Savory's George and Margaret on Broadway in 1937, and the original production of J.B. Priestley's When We Are Married in London's West End in 1938.
Time and the Conways is a 1984 drama film directed by Vladimir Basov and based on the eponymous 1937 play by English playwright J. B. Priestley, filmed in 1984.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
