Award-winning actors Annette Bening and Tracy Letts return to Broadway in the play that launched Arthur Miller as the moral voice of the American Theater. In the aftermath of WWII, the Keller family struggles to stay intact and to fight for their future when a long-hidden secret threatens to emerge - forcing them to reckon with greed, denial, repentance, and post-war disenchantment across generations.
First Bening combusts, then Walker goes up like a Roman candle, and ultimately Letts collapses in an avalanche of dust. There are other strong elements in these final sequences, particularly Hampton Fluker's performance as the weirdly childlike George-who has been deeply wronged by the Kellers but who wants to forgive them anyway, because it would let him pretend to be innocent again. His dazzled eyes reflect the central trio, staggered by their charisma and blinded to any flaws. Does All My Sons have failings? Never you mind. All you'll be able to remember is a family of giants falling one after the other, like a stand of redwoods crashing down.
But O'Brien creates two interracial families for the Miller drama, set in an otherwise realistically depicted 1947, without comment. Since 'All My Sons' is an indictment of capitalism, it's odd to have a byproduct of that economic system as practiced in the United States simply ignored here. This revival acts as if racism didn't exist among these kinds of characters at that time, which isn't that far away from Joe Keller's attitude regarding his crime.
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