Through November 2: Albion Theatre’s “I Been Here Before” Finds Humanity in Priestley’s Puzzle of Time
Albion’s strong acting doesn’t just interpret Priestley’s abstractions; it rescues them
There are easy plays, and then there is J.B. Priestley’s “I Been Here Before.” It challenges directors to balance the everyday with the metaphysical, actors to embody theories as well as people, and audiences to give themselves over to a slow, dialogue-rich unfolding. For those who want theater to pass like a breeze, this is not it; for those who want theater to wrestle with time, fate and human frailty, Albion Theatre’s current production provides an engrossing encounter. Its strength lies less in Priestley’s construction than in the conviction of the players who inhabit it.
The play unfolds at the Black Bull Inn during Whitsuntide, 1937. Six characters are entwined: Walter Ormund (Jeff Kargus), Janet Ormund (Bryn McLaughlin), Oliver Farrant (Dustin Petrillo), innkeeper Sam Shipley (Robert Ashton), his daughter Sally Pratt (Anna Langdon) and the enigmatic Dr. Görtler (Garrett Bergfeld).
Conceived around Russian philosopher P.D. Ouspensky’s theory of eternal recurrence, with a nod to J.W. Dunne, Priestley imagines lives repeating in cycles unless choices shift the course. A Russian theorist at the heart of a 1937 play may sound like a red flag — pun intended — but in Priestley’s hands it becomes a curious meditation on fate and recurrence rather than ideology.
The central questions about free will and time have been explored since — and often with greater economy — in films like “Donnie Darko” and “Arrival” and in multiple generations of “The Twilight Zone” and “Star Trek.” By comparison, Priestley’s version can feel like a timepiece with a hundred moving parts when a handful might have sufficed. It is the sort of play that, like a French film, invites you to retire afterward with serious friends, clove cigarettes and copious Viennese coffee to debate, “What did it mean?”
The subject here is time and its hold on humanity, essayed with a relentless, almost dogmatic lack of guile, as if Priestley were drafting his own “Brief History of Time” decades before Hawking — only with more whisky and fewer equations.
Robert Ashton and CJ Langdon direct with assurance and control, maintaining Albion’s hallmark polish while honoring the play’s deliberate, unhurried rhythms. Act I proceeds with a kind of quiet patience, demanding attention rather than grabbing it, and Acts II and III move more briskly once the philosophical gears begin to mesh. Lighting shifts between dim and bright — at times uncomfortably so — which underscored the unease of not knowing even if it left parts of the action obscured.
The set grounded the Yorkshire inn in realism while hinting at the metaphysical intrusions pressing on the guests’ lives. Dialogue often risks collapsing into exposition, yet Albion’s staging — and, more crucially, its actors — keep the production human and absorbing.
The ensemble is the production’s quiet triumph. Bergfeld’s Görtler carries enigmatic authority without sliding into caricature, giving the professor weight as more than a conduit for theory. Kargus delivers a commanding Walter, his whisky-soaked bluster shot through with desperation that makes his unraveling feel painfully human.
McLaughlin’s Janet is restless and sympathetic, though Priestley confines her to the narrow orbit of a suffering wife tethered to a suicidal alcoholic. Langdon’s Sally provides welcome texture — crisp, practical, and suspicious of the mysterious doctor — yet her role, too, is essentially one of support, tending both the inn and the unease that passes through it.
Petrillo brings earnestness and moral conflict throughout, giving Oliver a sincerity that keeps his choices believable. His later scenes with Janet fall just shy of convincing in their suddenness of affection, though that’s more a fault of Priestley’s contrivance than of performance.
Ashton, pulling double duty as director and as the innkeeper Sam, proves vital to the production’s success. Onstage, he brings genial pragmatism and emotional ballast — a quiet decency that steadies the play’s swirl of speculation. Offstage, his direction shows the same unshowy discipline, guiding a word-heavy script into something graceful and humane.
Though the female roles are written in service to the men’s crises, both McLaughlin and Langdon render them fully human — women holding their ground in a world organized around male remorse and revelation. Collectively, this cast’s believable, satisfying work steadies a play that might otherwise sag under the weight of its own philosophical scaffolding. Albion’s strong acting doesn’t just interpret Priestley’s abstractions; it rescues them, giving his grand questions the pulse of lived experience.
The ending left more questions than answers — perhaps a second viewing would clarify, or perhaps that is exactly the point, a prompt for the clove-cigarette and Viennese-coffee discussion mentioned earlier. Or perhaps Priestley simply didn’t care to probe beyond the narrow framing of his script.
Either way, the long journey of Albion’s performance proved enjoyable. In the final scene, as innkeeper Sam and a humbled and less-intoxicated Walter sit with their pipes and talk of sheep instead of destiny, the play circles back from cosmic speculation to the quiet pastoral world outside its windows.
“I Been Here Before” by Albion Theatre continues through Nov. 2 at the Kranzberg Black Box Theatre. See their website for more details.