All My Sons review Sally Field and Bill Pullman deliver a Miller for our times

August 2024 · 3 minute read
Review

Old Vic, London
In an era of fake news and moral uncertainty, this fine production of Arthur Miller’s play rings as true as ever

Why the spate of Arthur Miller revivals? And why now? Watching Jeremy Herrin’s fine production of Miller’s first Broadway hit – a joint Headlong/Old Vic affair with a star cast headed by Sally Field, Bill Pullman and TV’s Victoria, Jenna Coleman – I thought I detected an answer. At a time of flux and fakery when lies masquerade as truth, we find reassurance in Miller’s moral rigour.

Miller is also admired for his theatrical carpentry, although in this 1947 work you can occasionally see the joins. The play focuses on Joe Keller, a thriving businessman who escaped a wartime charge of issuing defective cylinder heads to combat planes by letting his partner take the rap. Exonerated but hardly guilt-free, Joe is suddenly confronted by the consequences of his actions. His wife, Kate, is obstinately convinced that their son, Larry, missing in action, is still alive. And when their other son, Chris, decides to marry Larry’s fiancee, Joe and Kate realise that the pretences by which they have lived are destined to be exposed.

Nervy anxiety … Sally Field is superb as Kate Keller. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/Guardian

Although the play grips, it has flaws: it seems unlikely that the fiancee, Ann, would have waited three years to reveal a letter explaining Larry’s fate.

What gives the play its momentum is the force of Miller’s message. In part the play is an assault on the twin American gods of family and profit: Joe’s last line of defence is: “I’m in business.” But this is not simply a play about war profiteering. As the American critic Harold Clurman pointed out, Miller’s real theme is the way a distorted individualism has replaced the idea of responsibility to the community. In that sense, it directly relates to a virtually contemporary play, JB Priestley’s An Inspector Calls, which also speaks to audiences today.

Miller’s morality is accompanied by psychological insights that Herrin’s production largely captures. Pullman, with his granite profile and spiky hair, lacks the backslapping bonhomie that David Suchet brought to Joe in the last West End revival, but he is excellent at conveying the character’s strenuous self-justification.

Field, meanwhile, is superb as Kate. She combines an innate warmth with a nervy anxiety suggested by the way she encases herself in her cardigan as if it were a protective shield. It has been argued that Kate is the “villain” of the piece in that she puts the sanctity of the home before ethics, but Field endows the character with an essential myopic innocence.

The presence of two American stars does nothing to unbalance the production. Colin Morgan captures perfectly Chris’s mixture of survivor guilt, intuitive awareness of Joe’s mendacity and love for his brother’s fiancee. Coleman, in a rare stage appearance after a decade in television, endows Ann with just the right blend of glowing sensuality and steely determination. As her lawyer brother, Oliver Johnstone also precisely shows a hunger for revenge on the Keller family melting under the influence of their hospitality.

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This may not be as great a play as Death of a Salesman, which opens shortly at the neighbouring Young Vic. If it brought the audience to their feet, it was not just a tribute to the performances but also to the enduring power of Miller’s appeal to our collective conscience.

At the Old Vic, London, until 8 June.

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