If you’ve read The Crucible blog, you’ll know I was really
excited to see All My Sons. As I’ve said previously, I’m not very familiar with
Arthur Miller’s work, so in preparation I made the mistake of watching a
previous version of the play (available online) starring David Suchet and Zoe
Wanamaker. It was fabulous!
Based upon a true story that Miller’s mother-in-law had seen
in an Ohio newspaper, Miller wrote All My Sons in a vain bid to write a
commercially successful play. All My Sons appears to be heavily influenced by
Henrik Ibsen’s The Wild Duck, a play whereby a family has various skeletons in
the closet which have to come out! In Miller’s story, two American business men
conspired with army inspection officers to approve defective aircraft engines built
for military use.
Money talks in this play… Joe Keller (Bill Pullman) has been
exonerated of knowingly shipping damaged cylinder heads to the American air
force, which have contributed to the deaths of 21 pilots during World War II.
Instead, he blames his partner
