Many Happy Returns

There’s topical resonance in Arthur Miller’s All My Sons, which, like the tale of the Demon Barber, contains a strong morality theme.

- Michael Billington

THIS year is turning into an unofficial festival of Arthur Miller. A powerful production of All My Sons at the Old Vic follows revivals of The American Clock and The Price, with Death Of A Salesman yet to come at the Young Vic. Is this mere coincidence? I suspect our current obsession with Miller has more to do with the urgency of his moral message in troubled times.

The great American critic Harold Clurman wrote of Miller, in 1947, that he showed how a destructive ‘individualism’ had replaced the idea of the individual’s responsibility to the community. What was true then seems even more relevant 70 years later.

Responsibility is a theme that runs through every line of All My Sons, Miller’s first big Broadway hit. The protagonist, Joe Keller, is a thriving businessman, who was accused in wartime of allowing defective cylinder heads to be fitted to airforce planes.

Joe, who let his partner take the rap, was ultimately exonerated, but, over the course of a single day, he’s confronted by the consequences of his moral abdication. When his son, Chris, seeks to marry his dead brother Larry’s fiancée, Joe and his wife, Kate, realise that the lies by which they have lived are destined to be exposed.

All My Sons was praised in 1947 for its ‘expert dramatic construction’. Today, that looks a touch contrived: you wonder why the fiancée, Ann, waited three years to reveal a letter that tells the truth about Larry’s death in the war.