CityLife

All My Sons

All My Sons
Bolton Octagon
Friday, October 2, 2009

THE Octagon has a deserved reputation for quality productions of works by renowned American playwright Arthur Miller.

A View From The Bridge, Death Of A Salesman and The Crucible are now followed by All My Sons, which provided him with his first major success.

The new artistic director, Olivier Award winner David Thacker, who's worked for the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre and the Young Vic, had a close working relationship with the late playwright.

He staged several of his productions in London which I'd seen so I was reassured of the production values to come. This was further reinforced by the excellent casting headed by M.E.N. Theatre Award nominee, George Irving (Anton Meyer in Holby City) whom we last saw here in 2007 in Shining City.

Beautifully judged

All My Sons is based upon a true story of which Arthur Miller's then mother-in-law pointed out in an Ohio newspaper. The story described how a woman who informed on her father who had sold faulty parts to the US military during Second World War.

Set in the aftermath of the war, Irving plays Joe Keller, a successful American industrialist with a questionable past in which he was accused, but cleared, of supplying fighter planes with defective engine parts leading to loss of life.

While Keller enjoys the fruits of his apparent success, his wife Kate is quietly driven to distraction because their fighter pilot son is missing in action.

Thacker has cast the excellent Margot Leicester, co-incidentally his wife and another M.E.N. Theatre Award nominee, in the role of a woman on the edge of a nervous breakdown. It's a beautifully judged performance.

Based on a true story

There are good performances too from Oscar Pearce as their son Chris and Vanessa Kirby as Ann.

Huw Higginson (George Garfield in The Bill) is neighbour Frank while Mark Letheren is George, son of Joe's old business partner, the catalyst to the succeeding dramatic events.

All My Sons is based upon a true story of which Arthur Miller's then mother-in-law pointed out in an Ohio newspaper. The story described how a woman who informed on her father who had sold faulty parts to the US military during Second World War.

With the current speculation about allegations of inadequate provision for our own troops, 60 years on, Miller's powerful work sadly still has relevance.

Tweet