J. B. Priestley's mystery/morality drama begins where comedies end. The Birling's have it made. The clan gathered for a white-tie celebration at their mansion in Brumley, Yorkshire, in 1912. They toast not just the engagement of young Sheila (she's marrying Gerald Croft: that's right, one of the Crofts), but also their prosperity and the prospect of Arthur, the "hard-headed" patriarch, being knighted.

A mite tipsy from the port, Arthur gives a speech about ruling class privilege. He assures everyone that the political movements of late - for social reform, worker's and women's rights, justice under the law - are no threat to the status quo. They're just volumes of jabber from George Bernard Shaw and his like. And that talk of war? Don't be silly.

Enter a trench-coated inspector named Goole (rhymes with "ghoul"). An impoverished woman just committed suicide, he says. She'd been turned out and turned down everywhere she went. So she drank disinfectant and "died in misery and agony, hating life."

One of her names was Eva Smith. Anyone recall it?

No Birley budges; nor does the inspector, a patient man with a notebook full of questions - for all assembled, in fact. And what follows is a systematic, suspense-filled dismantling.

Just who is this inspector? And why does he talk like G.B. Shaw and the rabble-rousers: "there are millions and millions" of Eva Smiths "still left with us...with their hopes, fears, their suffering, and chance of happiness all intertwined with our lives. We don't live alone. We are members of one body"?

Daren Scott, a Craig Noel Award-nominee for Of Mice and Men at New Village Arts, has become a director to watch. He moved from John Steinbeck's gritty realism to the slick, urbane style of the Birley's without a hitch.

(He's also found a way to keep the full cast alive at all times. Dialogue these days is rata-tat, a la David Mamet. By contrast, Priestley's people often speechify, and everyone just stands around. During the breaks, Scott's cast is always in character. No mean feat).

Fred Harlow plays Arthur as an entitled untouchable. He begins with such pure certainty it makes his public scandal all the more juicy. In the end Harlow looks like he's just seen a ghost.

As his wife Sybil, Jill Drexler battles the truth by embracing denial so fiercely there's an uncivil war inside her. Young cast members fare well: Jack Rosko's Gerald Croft, Danielle DeCarlo's Sheila, Christyn Chandler's Edna, and especially Joshua Jones's port-swilling Eric who, like Sybil, is turning inside-out. D. Candis Paule gives the inspector a beautifully timed, gently insistent voice - like the Master of Ceremonies for a collective comeuppance.

The design work's of a piece. Andy Scrimger's set, Gemima Dutra's elegant costumes, Jason Connors' sounds, and Chad Oakley's lighting (which needs a bit more downstage) - everything is appropriately formal. The stage picture's a place where things do not budge. Until an inspector calls.

Scripps Ranch Theatre, 10455 Pomerado Road, Scripps Ranch, playing through April 21. Click for showtimes.