The last time that Bryan Cranston teamed up with director Ivo Van Hove, for Network at the National Theatre and on Broadway in 2017 and 2018, the Breaking Bad star’s efforts were rewarded with the golden double of the Olivier and Tony Awards for Best Actor. Only a fool would bet against a repeat triumph now, as Cranston offers a magnificent performance of craggy, rugged resilience tempered with affability in Arthur Miller’s 1947 classic.
He’s matched for excellence by Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Paapa Essiedu and Hayley Squires, as this tremendous quartet unfolds a narrative of the almighty clashing of tides, with capitalism taking on ethics, fathers squaring up to sons and the past jostling for position with the future.
Van Hove, a Belgian especially celebrated for his work in Amsterdam, became a notable name in British theatre in 2014, when his revelatory production of Miller’s All My Sons stripped away accumulated years of flounce and accretion to reach the savage pulsing heart of the drama. He does the same thing here; playing now at just over two hours without interval, All My Sons assumes the grim yet towering momentum, inexorability and universality of a Greek tragedy.
Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Richard Hansell and Bryan Cranston in All My Sons (Photo: Jan Versweyveld)Designer Jan Versweyveld, Van Hove’s long-time partner in art and life, has come up trumps once again, offering a stage that is bare except for one dramatically fallen tree, an image that holds significant plot heft. A giant round porthole of a window high up in the back wall starts off by gleaming with yellow sun-like positivity, before shifting to markedly more ambiguous colours.
As with the window, the Keller family are initially in good spirits, despite the long shadow cast by fighter pilot son Larry having been declared missing in action some three years previously. Nonetheless, father Joe (Cranston), the owner of a successful manufacturing firm and other son Chris (Essiedu) are looking forward with tentative optimism, the latter because he plans to propose to Larry’s former sweetheart Ann (Squires). She’s the daughter of Joe’s former business partner, who was imprisoned because of the sale of defective parts to the US Air Force during the war. Only mother Kate (Jean-Baptiste) remains unshakeably determined that Larry is not dead and that a union between Chris and Ann would spell nothing but disaster.
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The leads give four exquisitely traced performances, affording the Keller family a convincingly lived-in dynamic. Cranston looks ever more hewn from Clint Eastwood-style stone as Joe grapples with the present consequences of past actions. There’s a light-hearted opening dance of paternal-filial affection and frustration between him and Essiedu; even before events take a turn for the darker, Essiedu’s eternal optimist of a Chris lets out a low growl of irritation whenever emotions get the better of him and words fail to rise to the challenge.
Jean-Baptiste continues her undaunted work from earlier this year in the Mike Leigh film Hard Truths by making Kate uncompromisingly unafraid to go against the overall family mood. Squires, never finer, is a determined young woman intent on carving happiness from loss.
These are two immensely powerful and gripping hours; I have quite simply never seen a better production of this play.
To 7 February (allmysonsplay.com)
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