Time and the Conways
Encyclopedia
Time and the Conways is a British play written by J. B. Priestley
J. B. Priestley
John Boynton Priestley, OM , known as J. B. Priestley, was an English novelist, playwright and broadcaster. He published 26 novels, notably The Good Companions , as well as numerous dramas such as An Inspector Calls...

 in 1937 illustrating J. W. Dunne's Theory Of Time through the experience of a moneyed Yorkshire
Yorkshire
Yorkshire is a historic county of northern England and the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its great size in comparison to other English counties, functions have been increasingly undertaken over time by its subdivisions, which have also been subject to periodic reform...

 family, the Conways, over a period of nineteen years from 1919 to 1937. Widely regarded as one of the best of Priestley's so-called 'Time Plays', a series of pieces for theatre which played with different concepts of Time (the others including I Have Been Here Before, Dangerous Corner and An Inspector Calls
An Inspector Calls
An Inspector Calls is a play written by English dramatist J. B. Priestley, first performed in 1945 in the Soviet Union and 1946 in the UK. It is considered to be one of Priestley's best known works for the stage and one of the classics of mid-20th century English theatre...

) it continues to be revived in the UK regularly.

Plot

Time and the Conways is in three acts. The first act is set in the Conway house in 1919 on the night of the birthday of one of the daughters, Kay. Act Two moves to the same night in 1937 and is set in the same room in the house. Act Three then returns to 1919 seconds after the Act One left off.

In the first Act we meet the Conway family, Mrs Conway, her daughters Kay, Hazel, Madge and Carol and her sons Alan and Robin. Three other characters appear: Gerald, a solicitor; Joan, a young woman in love with Robin; and Ernest, a young, ambitious entrepreneur of a lower social class. Act One's atmosphere is one of festivity as the family celebrates the end of the War and look forward to great future of fame, prosperity and fulfilled dreams. In a pensive moment when Kay is left alone on stage she seems to slip into a reverie and has a vision of the future...

Act Two plunges us into the shattered lives of the Conways exactly eighteen years later. Gathering in the same room where they were celebrating in Act One we see how their lives have failed in different ways. Robin has become a dissolute travelling salesman, estranged from his wife Joan, Madge has failed to realise her socialist dreams, Carol is dead, Hazel is married to the sadistic but wealthy Ernest. Kay has succeeded to a certain extent as an independent woman but has not realised her dreams of novel writing. Worst of all, Mrs Conway's fortune has been squandered, the family home is to be sold and the children's inheritance is gone. As the Act unfolds resentments and tensions explode and the Conways are split apart by misery and grief. Only Alan, the quietest of the family, seems to possess a quiet calm. In the final scene of the Act, Alan and Kay are left on stage and, as Kay expresses her misery Alan suggests to her that the secret of life is to understand its true reality - that the perception that Time is linear and that we have to grab and take what we can before we die is false. If we can see Time as eternally present, that at any given moment we are seeing only 'a cross section of ourselves', then we can transcend our suffering and find no need to hurt or conflict with other people.

Act Three returns us to 1919 and we see how the seeds of the downfall of the Conways were being sown even then. Ernest is snubbed by Hazel and Mrs Conway, Gerald's budding love for Madge is destroyed by the snobbery of Mrs Conway in another moment of social arrogance, Alan is rejected by Joan who becomes betrothed to Robin. As the children gather at the end of the play for Mrs. Conway to foretell their future, Kay has a moment of memory of the vision of Act Two we have seen unfold. Disturbed, she steps out of the party and the play ends with Alan promising that he will be able to tell her something in the future which will help her.

About the play

The play works on the level of a universal human tragedy and a powerful portrait of the history of Britain between the Wars. Priestley shows how through a process of complacency and class arrogance Britain allowed itself to decline and collapse between 1919 and 1937 instead of realising the immense creative and humanistic potential of the post Great War generation. Priestley could clearly see the tide of history leading towards another major European conflict as he has his character Ernest comment in 1937 that they are coming to 'the next war'.

Thus Time and the Conways operates on many different levels - a political history of Britain between the wars, a universal tragedy, a family romance and a metaphysical examination of Time. As such it is one of Priestley's most accomplished and many-layered works for the stage, combining as it does an extremely accessible naturalistic style, heavily tinged with dramatic irony, with a network of sophisticated ideas and insights, which combine to make it one of his most popular plays.

The play emerged out of Priestley's reading of J. W. Dunne's book An Experiment with Time
An Experiment with Time
An Experiment with Time is a long essay by the Irish aeronautical engineer J. W. Dunne on the subjects of precognition and the human experience of time. First published in March 1927, it was very widely read, and his ideas promoted by several other authors, in particular by J. B. Priestley. Other...

in which Dunne posits that all time is happening simultaneously; i.e., that past, present, future are one and that linear time is only the way in which human consciousness is able to perceive this.

Priestley uses the idea to show how human beings experience loss, failure and the death of their dreams but also how, if they could experience reality in its transcendent nature, they might find a way out. The idea is not dissimilar to that presented by mysticism
Mysticism
Mysticism is the knowledge of, and especially the personal experience of, states of consciousness, i.e. levels of being, beyond normal human perception, including experience and even communion with a supreme being.-Classical origins:...

 and religion that if human beings could understand the transcendent nature of their existence the need for greed and conflict would come to an end.

Adaptations

Time and the Conways was adapted in 1985 by BBC for the television with Claire Bloom
Claire Bloom
Claire Bloom is an English film and stage actress.-Early life:Bloom was born in the North London suburb of Finchley, the daughter of Elizabeth and Edward Max Blume, who worked in sales...

 as Mrs Conway, Phyllis Logan
Phyllis Logan
-Education:Logan was educated at Johnstone High School in Johnstone, Renfrewshire, Scotland. After school, she graduated from the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama with the James Bridie Gold Medal in 1977.-Career:...

 as Kay, Simon Shepherd
Simon Shepherd
Simon Shepherd is a British actor. He is well known to TV audiences from many appearances, including Dr Will Preston in five series of ITV's Peak Practice....

 as Robin. It was later adapted for BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...

 under the direction of Sue Wilson and broadcast on 12 August 1994 (later re-broadcast on 23 May 2010 over BBC Radio 7). The cast included Marcia Warren
Marcia Warren
Marcia Warren is an English stage, film and television actress. On stage, she appeared in Blithe Spirit as Madame Arcati, and The Sea at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket.-Partial filmography:...

 as Mrs. Conway, Belinda Sinclair
Belinda Sinclair
Belinda Sinclair is a British actress widely known for several recurring television roles.She was born in London, trained as an actor with the Arts Educational Schools, London and had early success on the stage...

 as Kay, John Duttine
John Duttine
John Arthur Duttine is an English actor noted for his roles on stage, films and television. He is well known for his role as Sgt George Miller in Heartbeat....

 as Alan, Toby Stephens
Toby Stephens
Toby Stephens is an English stage, television and film actor who has appeared in films in both Hollywood and Bollywood. He is best known for playing megavillain Gustav Graves in the James Bond film Die Another Day , Edward Fairfax Rochester in the BBC television adaptation of Jane Eyre and Philip...

 as Robin, Emma Fielding
Emma Fielding
Emma Georgina Annalies Fielding is an English actress.-Biography:The lapsed Roman Catholic daughter of a British Army soldier, Fielding spent much of her childhood in Malaysia and Nigeria, and a period in Malvern above her grandparents' betting shop...

 as Carol, Stella Gonet
Stella Gonet
Stella Gonet is a Scottish theatre, film and TV actress.- Career :Gonet trained at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama and is known for playing Beatrice Eliott, one of the two lead roles, in three series of the television drama, The House Of Eliott and Chief Executive Officer Jayne...

 as Madge, Amanda Redman
Amanda Redman
-External links:* ArtistsTheatreSchool.com* The-Little.co.uk...

 as Hazel, John McArdle
John McArdle
John McArdle is an English actor. He is most notable for playing Billy Corkhill in the soap-opera Brookside, with many other smaller appearances in other soaps and dramas...

 as Ernest and Christopher Scott as Gerald.
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