archive 1959
Starting
on Monday 28 September
All My Sons
by Arthur Miller
The action of the play takes place in the back yard of the Kelller home in the outskirts of an American town, August of our era.
full introduction and synopsis
Artistic Credits
Director:
Collin Ellis
Designer: Michael Annals
Theatre Credits
Company
and Stage Director:
Anthony Poole
Deputy Stage Managers: George Rutland and Esther Dean
Assistant Stage Manger: Stuart Monro
Stage Assistants: Ann Parker and Christopher Beeching
Electrician: Seb Craig
Carpenter: Harold Brooks
Cast
Joe
Keller:
Brain Hawksley
Doctor Jim Bayliss: Andrew Lieven
Frank Lubey: Douglas Kerr
Sue Bayliss: Nancy Bacal
Lydia Lubey: Jill Johnson
Chris Keller: Brian Gilmar
Kate Keller: Jocelyne Page
Ann Deever: Anne Robson
George Deever: Henley Thomas
Act 1
A Sunday morning
Act 2
The same evening
Act 3
Two O’Clock the following morning
introduction and synopsis
All My Sons, Arthur Miller's first commercially successful play, opened at the Coronet Theatre in New York on January 29, 1947. It ran for 328 performances and garnered important critical acclaim for the dramatist, winning the prestigious New York Drama Critics' Circle Award.
Miller's earlier play, The Man Who Had All the Luck (1944), had not done well and had quickly closed; therefore, at the time All My Sons opened, Miller's reputation as a writer was based almost solely on Focus(1945), his lauded novel about anti-Semitism.
All My Sons is now regarded as the first of Miller's major plays. The work also greatly helped the career of Elia Kazan, who had first won accolades for his direction of Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth in 1942 and after directing All My Sons would continue to work with the plays of both Miller and Tennessee Williams to produce both legendary stage productions and important films.
In All My Sons Miller evidenced the strong influence of both Henrik Ibsen and Greek tragedy, developing a "formula'' that he would brilliantly exploit in his next play, Death of a Salesman (1949), which many regard as his finest work.
"All My Sons: Introduction." Drama for Students. Ed. Marie Rose Napierkowski. Vol. 8. Detroit: Gale, 1998. eNotes.com. January 2006. 22 October 2007.
