Annette Bening and Tracy Letts To Star In Miller’s ‘All My Sons’ On Broadway
Arthur Miller attends a premiere of “The Crucible.” Image by Getty Images/Dennis Clark/Stringer
By PJ Grisar September 21, 2018
Arthur Miller’s work is returning to the Broadway boards. The New York Times reports a new production of “All My Sons” will open at Roundabout Theater Company’s American Airlines Theater bringing some marquee names with it.
The World War II family drama, which premiered on Broadway in 1947, follows the Keller family, whose son Larry was declared MIA and whose patriarch, Joe, was tried and cleared of war profiteering for shipping faulty airplane parts.
“All My Sons” was Miller’s second play for the stage and his first success, spawning an Oscar-nominated film adaptation with Edward G. Robinson and Burt Lancaster a year after its debut. It’s widely credited with establishing his themes of guilt and a foundered American dream, as well as a brand of Greek-inspired theatricality that endured throughout his long career. If his second try wasn’t a hit, Miller said, he would have quit for another line of work.
“What I decided to do was write a play that would satisfy me in every conceivable way,” Miller said of “All My Sons” in a filmed interview from 1995. “I took over two years to write it and if that didn’t work I knew I didn’t belong in that place.”
We’re lucky the play struck a chord with audiences and so is Broadway. Since Miller’s centennial three years ago in 2015, his work has been produced three separate times on The Great White Way, garnering a Best Revival Tony for 2016’s “A View From the Bridge” directed by Ivo van Hove (that year Van Hove competed against his own production of another Miller play, “The Crucible”).
Pulitzer and Tony-winning playwright and actor Tracy Letts and Oscar and Tony-nominated actress Annette Bening are slated to star as Joe and his wife Kate respectively. The play was last revived on Broadway 2008 with John Lithgow and Dianne Wiest in the lead roles and for the first time in 1987 with Richard Kiley (who won the Tony for best actor) and Joyce Ebert. Roundabout previously produced the play in an Off-Broadway venue in 1997. The new production’s run will overlap with a West End revival starring Oscar-winner Sally Field and Bill Pullman.
Broadway mainstay and Tony and Drama Desk winner Gregory Mosher will direct the engagement, which will begin previews April 4 and open April 22.
PJ Grisar is the Forward’s culture intern. He can be reached at [email protected].
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