Broadway Features and Reviews
All My Sons: Broadway Lightening Strike
By Edith Haight, Broadway Magazine
There is a large tree branch that hovers over the stage of the Schoenfeld Theatre during the intensely taut revival of Arthur Miller's All My Sons. Touched with the gracefully muted lighting of Paul Anderson, that suspended branch hangs like a solid bolt of lightening constantly threatening to strike any one of the characters in the play. When Arthur Miller's story nears its conclusion and provides the crack of thunder, the literal shock of sound may be softer than expected, but the emotional impact is lasting and loud. Above all else, Simon McBurney's outstanding production captures Miller's brilliant ability to combine an authentic moral authority with a nimble flair for the dramatic.
With the exceptional trio of Dianne Wiest, John Lithgow, and Patrick Wilson in the central roles of the Keller family, this revival of Miller's play may offer the trappings of a Brechtian staging with projected text, actors sitting in view of the audience, and direct address of the audience, but the play truly ignites when the style is realistic. Dianne Wiest in particular is flawless, nuanced and hauntingly memorable. Weist's performance as Kate Keller, the mother who is grieving and not grieving at the same time, elevates the character to the level of Eugene O'Neil's Mary Tyrone as one of the most compelling figures in American dramatic literature. There is nothing stagey about her performance, in fact it isn't a performance at all. The storm clouds that hover over this Kate Keller are not projections, they are the real thing. Lithgow and Wilson are also both effectively natural in their roles as well. As brother and sister Ann and George Deever, Katie Holmes and Christian Camargo offer a rather affected contrast to the other leads. The Deevers tend to "mouth" their words, as though Mother Deever taught elocution in her spare time. With Holmes and Camargo, their diction is crisp but distancing.
The revival succeeds in part because of Simon McBurney's ability to tap Miller's gift for the theatrical. The director mines the text for each dramatic shift, both the subtle and the more heavy-handed elements, and brings a harmony to the sometimes disparate dramatic elements of the plot. The net effect is that the cathartic power of Miller as a complex moral playwright is emotionally palpable in this production. Miller doesn't lecture. As characters discuss money and business, Miller isn't preaching to his audience. Rather, in All My Sons, he renders a portrait that captures the complexity of an American Dream that is so often reduced to simple syllogism. While the play resonates today with its talk of war profiteering and the consequences of greed, it is Miller's gift for embracing the complexity of the American Dream, both it's positive and negative elements, that ultimately gives this production it's muscle. The aspirations of Miller's characters live alongside their knotty realities with tragic consequences that are sometimes thunderous and at other times muted.
Who says lightening doesn't strike twice? In All My Sons, lightening does strike twice. In fact, it strikes over and over and over again
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