JB Priestley's CORNELIUS hits the Finborough stage.......

Photograph by Robert Workman

CORNELIUS premiered at the Duchess Theatre, London in 1935 and starred JBP's close friend, Ralph Richardson.  This time around, Alan Cox plays Jim Cornelius in a production directed by Sam Yates and presented by Anna Collins and 31 Productions in association with Neil McPherson at the Finborough Theatre. 

 "........it's an intriguing piece that not only offers a vivid picture of office life, but also addresses the dire problems facing small businesses in the economic blizzard of the 1930s........"     Michael Billington The Guardian ****

""Cornelius is subtitled “A Business Affair in Three Acts” and takes place entirely in a London office; there are echoes of my father’s novel Angel Pavement, also centred on a city office and the people who work there. What, you will ask, did JBP know about offices? Well, he left school at 16 and worked in a Bradford wool office till he joined the army aged 20 in 1914. He knew at first hand the miserable existence of the office boy, so Lawrence’s outburst in Act Two comes from the heart. (The title character Jim Cornelius is the head of a failing firm.)"   Tom Priestley The Arts Desk