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All My Sons: director Ivo Van Hove powers up Arthur Miller’s post-war play with a Greek tragedy staging

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thursday

Belgian theatre director Ivo Van Hove is no stranger to American playwright Arthur Miller, directing acclaimed productions of A View From the Bridge at the Young Vic in 2014, with a transfer to London’s West End in 2015, and The Crucible on Broadway in 2016. Now he has another hit on his hands with his latest production of Miller’s All My Sons.

While Van Hove is known for using technology such as video screens on stage, this stripped-back production at the Wyndham Theatre allows the intensity of the play to reveal itself unfiltered.

Written in 1946, Miller’s play is set in a small nondescript post-war American town, and revolves around Joe Keller (Bryan Cranston), a former manufacturer of military aircraft parts, who has built a comfortable life and established himself as a respected figure in the community.

When only one of his sons, Chris (Paapa Esseidu), comes home from the war, it leaves their mother Kate (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) pining for news of her missing son, Larry. Four years later, Kate is forced to confront the possibility that Larry is never coming home when his former girlfriend Ann (Hayley Squires) gets engaged to Chris.

Ann is also the daughter of Joe’s former business partner, imprisoned during the war for selling faulty aircraft components that led to the deaths of American soldiers. Ann’s brother George arrives to stop her from marrying Chris and accuses Joe of being the one responsible for the defective parts – and by extension the reason Larry is missing. What unfolds is a relentless investigation of what we choose to believe and what we choose to take responsibility for within families and society.

The stripped-back nature of the production allows........

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