Written when he was thirty, as a last attempt at playwriting after a string of plays failed to
garner attention from producers or directors, All
My Sons is the first of Arthur Millers’ four big plays (the others
being Death
of a Salesman, The Crucible,
and A
View from the Bridge, which were all written consecutively). In it, we
can see the seeds of what he would continue to explore in increasing depth and
nuance throughout his career. And although you could perhaps pass All My Sons off as an ‘Ibsenesque’ play,
it is in fact just as devastatingly meaty and dread-full as all his others, and
grapples with issues of morality and ethics, consequences, responsibility,
denial, guilt, and profiteering. And it seems just as relevant now as it did
almost seventy years ago.
Directed by Kip
Williams for Sydney Theatre
Company, and staged within the cavernous Roslyn Packer Theatre, All My Sons is the story of the Keller
family as they wait for their son Larry, currently Missing In Action after
WWII, to come home. But as relationships form, old unhealed wounds and barely-suppressed
secrets are torn open, and the lie under the floorboards of the Kellers’
stability and wealth is laid bare for all to see.
