The Western Players
 

They Came To A City

by J.B. Priestley 

Shown : March 2005
Cast : Adrian Peace (Joe Dinmore), Simon Crutchley (Malcolm Stritton), Tony Manders (Cudworth), Ray Thompson (Sir George Gedney), Maria Bowler (Alice Foster), Hannah Evans (Philippa Loxfield), Margaret Gregory (Lady Loxfield), Karen Heaney (Dorothy Stritton), Edna Reeves (Mrs Batley)

Producer: Sheila Clements

Just before dawn the play's characters - who represent every stratum of society - come to the wall overlooking a strange city whose gate is shut against them. At daybreak they are admitted and towards the end of the day some have found it to be the ideal earth has never achieved. So that everyone may know of this attainable perfection two of them make the sacrifice of leaving the city to return to their sinful world.

Priestley described how he came to write the play. "During the war I was impressed by the very different attitudes of mind that people had to post-war changes, which were being very widely discussed. It seemed to me that there was a play in this, so long as I could keep away from the mere play of debate, which I dislike, and discover an appropriate 'symbolic action'. The unknown city gave me exactly what I wanted, but it should be remembered what is important in the play is not the city, but the prospective attitudes of the characters towards it."

Though written during the second world war and, as Priestley tells us, having an immediate relevance to post-war aspirations, yet the play has a timeless quality. It is about now as well as then. The principles Priestley cared about, and on which the city is based, are still Utopian Ideals. The characters come not only from different classes and locations, but also from different periods of time.