{"id":3782,"date":"2025-11-22T17:49:04","date_gmt":"2025-11-22T17:49:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/2025\/11\/22\/bryan-cranston-in-arthur-miller-revival\/"},"modified":"2025-11-22T17:49:05","modified_gmt":"2025-11-22T17:49:05","slug":"bryan-cranston-in-arthur-miller-revival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/2025\/11\/22\/bryan-cranston-in-arthur-miller-revival\/","title":{"rendered":"Bryan Cranston in Arthur Miller Revival"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n\tThe current West End revival of Arthur Miller<\/a>\u2019s breakthrough play All My Sons<\/em> comes to London with a distinguished pedigree. Director Ivo van Hove<\/a> has staged Miller before, with his scintillating, career-making version of A View from the Bridge<\/a><\/em> in London and New York, followed by The Crucible<\/a><\/em> on Broadway. He and Bryan Cranston<\/a> previously collaborated to spectacular effect in Network<\/a><\/em>, which landed the actor both Olivier and Tony awards.<\/p>\n

\n\tAll extremely high bars, daunting even. But this production equals, if not clears them. It\u2019s a phenomenal piece of theater<\/a>, with van Hove\u2019s direction, admirably served by Jan Versweyveld\u2019s design, at its most restrained and resonant, giving Miller\u2019s dissection of the American Dream the terrible, shuddering vibration of Greek Tragedy. This is enabled by an ensemble of uniform excellence, who milk every ounce of self-delusion, madness and quashed idealism from the text, along with a surprising sweetness from its ill-fated love story.<\/p>\n

\n\tLondon has seen All My Sons<\/em> quite recently, with Jeremy Herrin\u2019s 2019 production<\/a> starring Bill Pullman and Sally Field. That revival left its own, not inconsiderable mark; but the quick return of the play is testimony both to its increasing relevance \u2014 not least in the way that business practice continues to dominate political and social mores, certainly in the U.S. \u2014 and the room given for actors\u2019 interpretations.<\/p>\n

\n\tVan Hove and Versweyveld share a sensibility that manages to embrace both expressionistic minimalism and a penchant for showmanship, sometimes in the same setting. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe opening here is a fabulous example: a ferocious storm, thunder booming, the stage bare except for a giant tree, around which is draped the frail figure of a woman in a flimsy nightgown, Kate Keller (Marianne Jean-Baptiste<\/a>). Suddenly the tree cracks and topples, amid a blaze of red light. It\u2019s primal, thrilling (the British audience, not accustomed to clapping until the end of a play, applaud immediately). In an instant, it shouts out \u201cGreek.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe fallen tree will stay on stage for the rest of the play, with no other scenery, representing the Kellers\u2019 yard in which the whole of the action takes place. High in the backdrop, a large, cut-out disc offers a window into the house, shining different colors as the drama progresses.<\/p>\n

\n\tCranston\u2019s Joe Keller dominates the opening scenes, as he holds court to any one of the neighbors and local kids who happens by the yard. He couldn\u2019t be more amiable \u2014 a baseball-capped, clownish, even slightly doddery old fella, whose whole persona seems to be based on making people happy.<\/p>\n

\n\tChief amongst these people is his son Chris (Paapa Essiedu<\/a>), who works in his father\u2019s manufacturing business, but has an idealistic bent and the air of someone who wants but doesn\u2019t dare to forge his own path. Cranston and Essiedu convey a father-son bond of unusual closeness \u2014 hugging, play-fighting, joshing; but this physical proximity will be repeated at the end of the play to devastatingly different effect.<\/p>\n

\n\tThis is a community still feeling the affects of WWII. Chris returned from the war intact, but is still troubled by the fellow soldiers he lost, and feels guilty about the easy life he\u2019s inheriting from his father. Moreover, his brother, Larry, went missing in action; and while Joe, Chris, Larry\u2019s old girlfriend Ann Deever (Hayley Squires) and most everyone else accepts his death, his mother, Kate, does not. Her insistence that Larry will return keeps her husband and surviving son in a constant limbo, tiptoeing around her feelings.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnn\u2019s return home from New York is the catalyst that will smash this awkward stasis, but not in a good way, given that Chris and Ann want to marry. As Joe puts it to his son: \u201cIf you marry the girl, you are pronouncing him [Larry] dead.\u201d And as Kate tells her husband, if Larry is<\/em> dead, she will kill herself.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs she demonstrated in her last film, Mike Leigh\u2019s Hard Truths<\/a><\/em>, Jean-Baptiste is highly adept at playing women whose vulnerability makes them ferociously difficult to deal with. Her twitchy, volcanic Kate keeps everyone on edge; though when she does warm to people, there\u2019s a reminder of how she and her husband have remained pillars of their community.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere is, though, another wartime wound to deal with. During the war, Joe\u2019s factory supplied defective aircraft cylinders to the Air Force, resulting in the deaths of 21 pilots. Joe was exonerated, while his partner Steve, Ann\u2019s father, was not, and remains in prison. Now, Ann\u2019s arrival in town is closely followed by that of her brother George (Tom Glynn-Carney), a lawyer who has just visited his father and has urgent news. Joe\u2019s \u201ctalent for ignoring things\u201d is about to be severely challenged.<\/p>\n

\n\tOne of the reasons the production exerts such power is the foundations laid by the cast, whose performances couldn\u2019t be more tangibly flesh-and-blood in creating this community and its individuals. The scene between Essiedu and Squires, in which Chris and Ann finally acknowledge what their years-long written correspondence has meant to them both, is sweet, tender, awkwardly passionate and very affecting. And the frisson between George and the married neighbor Lydia (Aliyah Odoffin), meeting for the first time since he left for the war and clearly holding a candle for each other, carries the pathos of unfulfilled love.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe fragility of this society is also deep-rooted. Wearing a hoodie and with an extreme case of the shakes, Glynn-Carney\u2019s George seems less like a lawyer than an addict, or a delinquent. In part, this is a result of the rage he\u2019s now feeling, though when he mutters that he studied law in hospital, he reveals himself to be another casualty of war. And when Joe brags about the majors and colonels who now work on his factory floor, he sheds light on the cold welcome home for many veterans, now subservient to those who did not serve. It turns out that there are still many who believe Joe\u2019s wealth is simply \u201cloot, with blood on it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tUltimately, though, it\u2019s the lies and self-deception that truly sound the play\u2019s tragedy. As Joe\u2019s own, criminal role in the aircraft order comes home to roost, Cranston brilliantly peels away the layers of his character. He shifts from a man cushioned by years of deceit to a slippery attempt to bribe his way out of it (having just changed into a suit and looking like quite the huckster) to a finally honest, but belligerent defense of his actions \u2014 it was business<\/em>, he was only making money for his family \u2014 to a man completely crushed by the enormity of what he\u2019s done.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tJust like Joe, Kate has been hiding, her obsession with Larry\u2019s survival being her twisted way of dealing with her own complicity in her husband\u2019s actions. Facing them, Essiedu is towering as an idealist barely able to contain his disappointment and grief after his idolized father has been cruelly exposed. Squires admirably conveys Ann\u2019s solid decency and emotional intelligence, just as she sees her hopes of happiness fading.<\/p>\n

\n\tFor the most part, van Hove stands back and lets his actors do the heavy lifting, which is a sign of a master director who understands exactly how to serve a text. The odd flourish serves either as audience relief (it\u2019s fun to see Essiedu attack the tree with a chain saw), or to underpin the play\u2019s moral warning, which can only reverberate in a Trumpian world where both domestic and foreign policy are part of \u201cthe deal.\u201d So, when Johnny Cash\u2019s \u201cGod\u2019s Gonna Cut You Down\u201d plays during a curtain change, there\u2019s at least a little hope of some real-world justice.<\/p>\n

\n\tVenue: Wyndham\u2019s Theatre, London
Cast:\u00a0Bryan Cranston,\u00a0Marianne Jean-Baptiste,\u00a0Paapa Essiedu, Tom Glynn-Carney, Hayley Squires, Aliyah Odoffin,\u00a0Cath Whitefield,\u00a0Richard Hansell, Zach Wyatt
Playwright: Arthur Miller
Director: Ivo van Hove
Set and lighting designer: Jan Versweyveld\u00a0
Costume designer: An D\u2019Huys
Sound designer: Tom Gibbons
Presented by\u00a0Wessex Grove, Gavin Kalin Productions, Playful Productions<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The current West End revival of Arthur Miller\u2019s breakthrough play All My Sons comes to London with a distinguished pedigree. Director Ivo van Hove has staged Miller before, with his scintillating, career-making version of A View from the Bridge in London and New York, followed by The Crucible on Broadway. He and Bryan Cranston previously […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3783,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[3743,3741,3742,1718,651],"class_list":{"0":"post-3782","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fashion","8":"tag-arthur","9":"tag-bryan","10":"tag-cranston","11":"tag-miller","12":"tag-revival"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3782"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3782\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3784,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3782\/revisions\/3784"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}