MAYER WAKEFIELD has reservations about the direction of a play centered on a DVLA re-training session for three British-Pakistani motorists
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Worrisome intrusion on the American Dream
The fragile foundations of post-war US optimism are ever present in Arthur Miller's play, says TOM KING
PIC CAP Hoping against hope: Sally Field as Kate Keller Pic: Johan Persson
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JOHN GREEN relishes photography that unfolds a longstanding and poetic relationship with Leeds
A uncomfortably misogynistic authorial voice that sometimes seems to lack insight troubles FIONA O’CONNOR
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a production that panders – if inadvertently – to Western prejudice against China
JOHN GREEN is fascinated by a history that excavates the enormous role played by agricultural workers in recent times
ALEX HALL recommends a book that places empirical evidence at the heart of understanding racism
All My Sons
Old Vic, London
SET at a time when Americans, sure of their place in the world after the defeat of fascism in WWII, were able to pursue their collective dream, Arthur Miller’s All My Sons begins in the sunny, vernal tranquility of a leafy Mid West suburb.
That sense of security is personified in the figure of Joe Keller (Bill Pullman), a successful businessman and archetypal family man. Outside a sunlit clapboard house bordered by a picket fence he reads the papers, jokes with neighbours and chats with his son Chris (Colin Morgan).
But gradually, through throwaway comments and casual conversation – testament to Miller’s skill as a playwright – we learn that he and his wife Kate (Sally Field) had another son, Jerry, who went missing in action during the second world war which had finished only two years previously.
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