The Corn is Green
National Theatre, London

Two remits of the National Theatre – classical revival and new forms of storytelling – are implicitly separate but sometimes come together. In 1992, Stephen Daldry restaged J.B. Priestley’s 1945 domestic drama An Inspector Calls in the non-naturalistic style of German Expressionism. Echoing that much-revived success three decades on, Dominic Cooke disrupts and deconstructs another solid popular British drama.

First staged in 1938, Emlyn Williams’ The Corn is Green features a single, middle-aged Englishwoman, Miss Moffat, who transforms a big Welsh house she inherits into a school for local men who were sent down the mines aged ten. The idealistic educator identifies one pupil, Morgan Evans, as a potential genius and nudges him towards Oxford.