All My Sons
Opening Night: April 22, 2019
Closing: June 23, 2019
Theater: American Airlines
Award-winning actors Annette Bening, Tracy Letts and Benjamin Walker return to Broadway in the play that launched Arthur Miller as the moral voice of the American Theater. In the aftermath of WWII, the Keller family struggles to stay intact and to fight for their future when a long-hidden secret threatens to emerge—forcing them to reckon with greed, denial, repentance and post-war disenchantment across generations.
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April 22, 2019
Plays with a large moral vision are so last century. Our taste now is for the miniature and metaphoric — works too exquisite to live outside the living room. Or maybe our capacity for shame has shrunk. But in Arthur Miller’s “All My Sons,” originally produced in 1947, domesticity is just a backdrop. The drama takes place outdoors, amid trees and sky in an Ohio backyard soon after World War II. Its anger and ambition are likewise elemental. Too bad, then, that the Roundabout Theater Company revival that opened on Monday at the American Airlines Theater reaches the play’s level only intermittently, like a poorly tuned radio. Jack O’Brien’s literal-minded production, starring Tracy Letts and Annette Bening, does not make a resonant case for the drama today.
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April 22, 2019
“All My Sons,” Arthur Miller’s 1947 morality drama of conscience versus cowardice, is the kind of play that always feels relevant to some extent, given its hard-hitting exploration of corruption, sacrifice and citizenship, all within the context of a single family home and business. But in the current highly charged news cycle, with constant accusations of corporate and governmental misdeeds and inhumanity, “All My Sons” feels especially timely, adding tremendously to the dramatic power of the Roundabout Theatre Company’s straightforward but sharp and well-acted Broadway revival of the play, led by Annette Bening, Tracy Letts and Benjamin Walker. Miller’s first major work (which would soon be followed by “Death of a Salesman,” “A View From the Bridge” and “The Crucible”), the three-act play is set in the backyard of the home of Joe Keller (Letts) and Kate Keller (Bening), whose family was deeply scarred by World War II. Their son Larry went missing during battle, and Joe was accused of knowingly selling defective airplane parts to the military, leading to the deaths of 21 pilots.
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April 22, 2019
“Business!” In and of itself, it’s a fairly innocuous word. But as spat out in disgust by one of the main characters in Arthur Miller’s 1947 drama All My Sons, it becomes a harsh epithet representing the worst aspects of the American Dream. This current era of income inequality and tax cuts for the wealthy makes the moment register now more than ever. So does every other element of the play in this superb revival by the Roundabout Theatre Company. One of the dramatic highlights of the Broadway season, the production features outstanding performances from a stellar cast headed by Annette Benning, Tracy Letts and Benjamin Walker, with impeccable direction by Jack O’Brien. Miller’s first Broadway success, All My Sons presents us with the tragic figure of Joe Keller (Letts), a midwestern factory owner who barely escaped being imprisoned after his company produced defective cylinder heads during World War II, resulting in the deaths of 21 American pilots. That plot point sadly and vividly echoes the recent news stories involving Boeing passenger planes.
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April 22, 2019
Don’t be fooled by the placid backyard setting, neighborly small talk and father-son joviality at the start of the Roundabout Theatre Company’s blistering revival of Arthur Miller’s “All My Sons” starring Annette Bening and Tracy Letts. There are plenty of secrets, resentments and disillusionments ahead, poised to rip this sunny Middle Americana facade to shreds. The 1947 play that was Miller’s first big success (and his warm-up to “Death of a Salesman”) can sometimes feel like an Ibsen/Odets homage, with its heavy hand on symbols, speechifying and mechanical plotting. But it still packs a wallop all its own, especially in this wonderfully cast, honestly staged and beautifully presented production. It even makes you rethink one of the lead characters in a way that makes the play’s ending even more harrowing. It’s the kind of play that always feels relevant — when are works decrying greed and corruption not relevant? — but Miller’s tale of ethical malfeasance, moral bankruptcy and enabling behavior — not to mention faulty airplane parts, eerily echoed in today’s headlines — has an especially deep sting now.
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April 22, 2019
A muddled casting controversy and the resignation of a prominent director no doubt diverted some early public and press attention from the Roundabout Theatre Company’s revival of Arthur Miller’s All My Sons, but this Broadway production, opening tonight, can handle whatever comes its way. When all’s said and done, Jack O’Brien’s knock-you-from-behind staging is as powerful and sturdy as Miller’s post-war classic itself. And in a shattering performance that adds yet another layer to her quietly remarkable career, Annette Bening finds grace notes in the role of the grieving Gold Star mother that brings the character to vivid, brutalized life.
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