Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Bill Pullman, Sally Fields, Jenna Coleman, Colin Morgan, Sule Rimi, Gunnar Cauthery, Kayla Meikle, Bessie Carter, Oliver Johnstone, Theo Boyce, Ruth Redman, Russell Wilcox.
For those that seek the truth, the shame of it is that it ends in tragedy. If there is any 20th Century playwright to whom tragedy is a gift that deserves to be exposed into the broad light of day, it is Arthur Miller, an expert who saw the American dream as a symbol, not of goodness and righteousness, but of fear, perhaps corruption, of the willingness to do whatever it took to keep humanity locked in a cycle of calamity, of refusing to see that the recklessness of one simple action would be visited upon our children forever.
A comedy will satisfy our brain for a short time, perhaps keeping us amused as the clock turns past midnight and forgotten by the next day, tragedy lives on, it breathes. It is self-replicating and able to continue the cycle of misery across the entire lexicon of works by the American writer, tragedy is ever watchful and besides the incisive and damning accusations contained within The Crucible, All My Sons surely should rank as the pinnacle of showing what America was truly like as a nation during Miller’s lifetime.
Unquestionably there is always honour in seeing an actor upon the stage, whether it is the debut role, or indeed the gravity in which a star from across the Atlantic Ocean might be drawn to perform for a British audience and yet in All My Sons the honour feels as if it is steeped in privilege, in a favour shown to audiences as both Bill Pullman and Sally Fields give such presentations that they endow creative freedom, charm and menace all rolled up in the gut of their character. For there is menace, of wartime lies, of the willingness to deceive and to protect that comes through these two icons of cinema and the way they transfer their talent to the London stage.
Accompanied by the purposeful and equally as stunning in stage, Colin Morgan as Chris Keller, Jenna Coleman as Ann Deever and Kayla Meikle as the dominant, almost perfectly hypocritical Sue Bayliss, Bill Pullman and Sally Fields brought to life one of the most tragic pairings to absolute life, a man who knows his neighbours hate him but still shows geniality despite all he has done wrong and a wife who refuses to confront him about all he has placed in her way until it is too late to truly talk and hopefully forgive.
Tragedy is the way we see the world, hope is eternal but human beings cannot live up to that lofty edifice, we are doomed by our own ambition to die by our own mistakes and with tragic consequences for those around us.
Ian D. Hall