Cast carries Lyric's 'Inspector'

"An Inspector Calls," Old Lyric Repertory Company, through Aug. 1, Caine Lyric Theatre, Logan (435-797-8022 or www.boxoffice.usu.edu); running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes (one intermission)

LOGAN — Not really a mystery, not suspenseful, "An Inspector Calls" nonetheless ends up being a bit of a surprise as the fourth offering of the Old Lyric Repertory Company summer season.

A last-minute substitution in the four-production OLRC lineup, "An Inspector Calls" uses a dining room in an upper-crust British home located in an industrial city in the North Midlands for playwright John Boynton Priestly to subtly bring several social issues front and center.

Though it dabbles with being preachy, "An Inspector Calls" holds the attention of the audience with strong characterizations and a small cast, most notably that of Inspector Goole.

Goole is portrayed by Phillip R. Lowe. With a simple cock of the head and piercing eyes, Goole is able to interrogate the Birling family about the death of a young girl who the family members may have known.

With soft crepe soles on his shoes, Lowe is able to sneak about the home and listen when no one knows he's there. The opposite of Columbo, Goole's intensity and line of questioning allows the Birling family to have just enough rope to, well, come close to hanging themselves.

Lowe is wonderful as the poker-faced Goole. His voice carries perfectly throughout the theater, with practiced and precise accent, and his use of simple props — a notebook and photographs — is on target.

Keri Larsen is equally commanding as the powerful family matriarch Sybil Birling. Her battle of emotions with Goole is well-played.

Daughter Sheila is played by Leslie Aldredge, better suited here than her spot in "The Importance of Being Earnest," also an OLRC offering. Aldredge looks genuinely happy early in the production, when happiness is in order, and genuinely distressed later on, when angst is very much on the table.

Her "chatty Kathy" nervousness around Inspector Goole ends up unraveling much of his investigation and giving Sheila the role of family conscience.

Kent Hadfield has a nice mixture of nervousness and pomposity as Arthur Birling, though some of the tension around the inspector almost feels like bobbled lines.