Dangerous Corner

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At their stylish country retreat, Freda and Robert Caplan host a dinner party for their colleagues and friends. Young, beautiful and successful, they have the world at their feet. Then a cigarette box and an ill-considered remark spark off a relentless series of revelations and other more dangerous secrets are painfully exposed. Priestley wrote this play to prove that a novelist could write an effective play using the strict economy of the stage. It was first produced at the Lyric Theatre in May 1932, with Flora Robson in the role of Olwen Peel, Richard Bird as Robert Caplan and Marie Ney as Freda Caplan. In his biography of Priestley, Vincent Brome wrote of Dangerous Corner: "Directed by Tyrone Guthrie, it ran for just five performances, then the backers withdrew their support. Priestley took a cold hard look at the situation, made some swift calculations with his agent A.D. Peters, and plunged in daringly to rescue it. He was by now a relatively rich man and he drew on the accumulatuion of royalties to keep the play running at a loss. In the end his audacity paid off. The destructive notices in the daily press were followed by favourable reviews by Ivor Brown in the Observer and James Agate in the Sunday Times. It became one of the most popular plays Priestley ever wrote."