J. B. Priestley's Time Plays

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The 'Time Plays' are a series of dramas written by British author J. B. Priestley written during the 1930s and 40s. They are so called because each plays with a different concept of time. In each play an alternative theory of time becomes the central metaphor or theatrical device of the play, the characters' lives being affected by how they react to the unusual temporal landscape they encounter.

The Time Plays are usually thought of as including Dangerous Corner, in which a group of characters' dark secrets are wiped out when the play returns to the beginning at the fall of the curtain; Time and the Conways, which explores J. W. Dunne's theory of simultaneous time expounded in the book An Experiment with Time; I Have Been Here Before, which is inspired by P. D. Ouspensky's theory of eternal recurrence from A New Model of the Universe; Johnson Over Jordan, in which a man encounters a series of trials in the afterlife and, most famously, An Inspector Calls in which a family undergo a police investigation into a suicide they discover has not happened yet.

Of all the theories of time employed in the plays Priestley professed only to believe in one: that of J. W. Dunne. Although still popular with audiences and although many still undergo revivals regularly in the UK, critical opinion remains divided about their literary worth and the validity, or not, of the use of the time theories as theatrical devices.