Review - All My Sons - People's Theatre

All My Sons 

People's Theatre

4th June, 2024

Written by Arthur Miller 

Presented by People's Theatre

Directed by Eileen Davidson

Joe Keller is a successful man. He has built up his manufacturing business since the war, providing a beautiful home for his wife Kate, and a thriving company to leave to his son, Chris. He is popular with his neighbours, and the neighbourhood kids. It all seems ideal but beneath the smiles and success are dark secrets. Their youngest son Larry never returned from the war, lost in action, his plane and body never found. Kate lives in hope that one day he will return like so many other sons and husbands she reads of in the news. Chris their eldest son returned from war and slipped into the expected life at his father's firm, but he is not content. He wants more than a life of appeasing his parents for the loss of his brother. This comfortable post-war success does not sit well with him when so many of his comrades did not come back.  

Into all this he has invited Ann. Ann and he have been corresponding for several years, and Chris has invited her back to her home town to ask her to marry him. Kate will not like this, and they have to find a way to break the news to her.  Ann was Larry's girl, and is the daughter of Joe's former partner, Steve. Steve is currently in prison, convicted of supplying faulty aircraft parts in the war - a crime for which Joe was exonerated.  Ann has not been back to her home town since the trial. 

As the play progresses it becomes clear that there is more to the story than first appears. Though he has worked hard to rebuild his reputation, there are underlying doubts about his involvement. Tension builds as Chris tries to assert his wishes for a different life with Ann, against his mother's assertion that Ann is Larry's girl, and that Larry will be coming home one day, while his father tries to maintain the status quo. 

Then come revelations from Sue Bayliss, the Doctor's wife - a bitter and unhappy woman, and the call from Ann's brother with more hints that things are not what they seem. The Keller's carefully constructed life is about to come crashing down. 

There are so many layers to this play - everyone of the characters is hiding their true selves. They all have secrets. Dreams that are unfulfilled, different lives they could have lived. The life that we see them living on stage is carefully but precariously balanced on a single truth - or untruth - and when that is revealed the balance is lost, with catastrophic results. 

The stage is set as the Keller's back yard, in front of their beautiful house, with the garden swing and Larry's tree - which is felled by a storm at the start of the play - a telling symbol of what is about to befall the Kellers.  the house is almost a character in itself - holding the memory of Larry in his room, and lighting up from to cast shadows of the characters when they are inside - most notably when Ann takes the call from her brother. The lighting gives a sense of the life lived in the house, but the shadows also give an ominous sense of foreboding - again, there is the feeling that not all is right in this world. 

There is a brittleness about the characters in their determination to be seen to be happy, to be living their lives, making choices, and yet you do feel that any one of them might break at any moment. And all it takes is that one truth to surface for the breaking to happen. 

Jonathan Goodman is superb, fronting it out as the all American success story, while Ann Zunder plays a blinder as his apparently emotionally distraught wife - and yet, was she not actually the strength behind the whole family? Her assertion that Larry is not dead is what has kept chaos at bay. She knows the truth of it - a father cannot kill his own son! 

Each actor in this production gives such a convincing portrayal - you feel their frustrations, their joys, their disappointments and their doubts! Each one reveals little by little the cracks and faults in their story - until the final reveal, and all is lost. It was fascinating to watch, as each character revealed themselves, like a slowly pulled thread, and eventually the whole fabric of their lives unravelled.

It's a complicated tragedy - a story of love and loyalty, guilt and innocence, of truth and patriotism, of family, and of the tarnished American Dream. This is the kind of production that reminds me why I love theatre so much. It is compelling. 

All My Sons plays until June 8th. I highly recommend it. 

*images by Paul Hood

Denise Sparrowhawk