The little-known Cornelius will be of special interest to admirers of JB Priestley, author of the highly popular and regularly revived An Inspector Calls, When We Are Married and Time and the Conways. The play, subtitled “a business transaction in three acts”, was written for Ralph Richardson, Priestley’s favourite actor, and premiered in 1935 when it did not do well. Since then it has had only one revival in 1940 when a very young Dirk Bogarde, making his West End debut, played the sulky office boy.
Cornelius is the junior partner in a small old-fashioned import firm facing bankruptcy. There is no business and there are no jobs. Door-to-door salesmen, unable to sell their wares, are starving. There’s a recession world-wide and creditors are beating at the door. Cornelius (Alan Cox), a frustrated middle-aged romantic dreamer, feels he has wasted his life and missed out on love, too. He preaches “go and get it” but he has stayed put all his life. Richardson had the quirkiness and eccentricity the role really needs and it is easy to imagine him handled the amusing telephone conversation with the Income Tax people who are chasing him.
Priestley’s plays are informed by his humanity and his socialism but he doesn’t preach. Cornelius is not a tract and the actors make much of the cameo roles in Sam Yates’s production with fine performances by Col Farrell as an elderly cashier, Emily Barber as a very pretty secretary, Annabel Topham as an unhappy spinster and Jamie Newall as the senior partner who opts out.