All My Sons: director Ivo Van Hove powers up Arthur Miller’s post-war play with a Greek tragedy staging
Belgian theatre director Ivo Van Hove is no stranger to American playwright Arthur Miller, directing acclaimed productions of A View From the Bridge at the Young Vic in 2014, with a transfer to London’s West End in 2015, and The Crucible on Broadway in 2016. Now he has another hit on his hands with his latest production of Miller’s All My Sons.
While Van Hove is known for using technology such as video screens on stage, this stripped-back production at the Wyndham Theatre allows the intensity of the play to reveal itself unfiltered.
Written in 1946, Miller’s play is set in a small nondescript post-war American town, and revolves around Joe Keller (Bryan Cranston), a former manufacturer of military aircraft parts, who has built a comfortable life and established himself as a respected figure in the community.
When only one of his sons, Chris (Paapa Esseidu), comes home from the war, it leaves their mother Kate (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) pining for news of her missing son, Larry. Four years later, Kate is forced to confront the possibility that Larry is never coming home when his former girlfriend Ann (Hayley Squires) gets engaged to Chris.
Ann is also the daughter of Joe’s former business partner, imprisoned during the war for selling faulty aircraft components that led to the deaths of American soldiers. Ann’s brother George arrives to stop her from marrying Chris and accuses Joe of being the one responsible for the defective parts – and by extension the reason Larry is missing. What unfolds is a relentless investigation of what we choose to believe and what we choose to take responsibility for within families and society.
The stripped-back nature of the production allows for the captivating performances to sing. Cranston, Esseidu, Jean-Baptiste and Squires all give faultless performances that keep audiences captivated throughout. The play’s climax, when Cranston utters the line the play is named for, is genuinely heartwrenching.
Power of the Greek tradition
In the programme notes, Van Hove articulates his distaste for Miller being performed “very realistically and very naturalistically”. Instead, he points to Miller’s works as “more akin to the emotional savagery of a Greek tragedy”. In many ways, this staging recalls strong Greek theatre roots and engages imaginatively with the ancient form.
The scenery and lighting design by Jan Versweyveld mirror the space in ancient Greek theatre, an area I explore in my work. Historically, Greek tragedies were mostly set outside of a house and the stage consisted of a facade structure with one central door.
In All My Sons, the main characters come from the house to have their familial and social discussions and disagreements in public. The only glimpses of indoors are through a large circle above the door – less a window and more a cutaway into the interior, echoing the way ancient Greek theatre would stage elements of plays on top of the central house structure.
Scenically, the play begins with a striking image of Kate outside at night, beneath an imposing tree that topples in a storm and comes crashing to the earth. The tree remains unrooted but fixed in the centre of the stage throughout the play, a silent tribute to the missing son, still at the centre of their lives.
This echoes the opening of Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound, which begins with the protagonist being nailed to rock where he stays throughout the tragedy. These scenic choices pick up on the influence of ancient tragic structure on Miller’s piece.
All My Sons charts the downfall of Joe, a pillar of the community, who is brought low through his own hubris – reminiscent of Sophocles’ Oedipus, Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, and Euripides’ Bacchae.
The plot involves other classic Greek tragedy tropes, such as a long-lost figure returning with news about the past, and children being polluted by the sins of their parents. The denouement is precisely as Aristotle prescribes for a tragedy: a simultaneous discovery of information and a reversal of fortunes.
An essential component to Greek tragedy is the chorus. While we do not get a singing-dancing one in Miller’s play, the neighbour characters (Jim and Sue Bayliss, Lydia and Frank Lubey, and little Bert) function like a Greek chorus.
They observe and comment on the action, push the storyline forward and are there to listen to the characters articulate their thoughts. Importantly, their presence is felt when they are offstage, as Joe, Chris, and Ann are all consumed by how the neighbourhood perceives them.
Most striking is the play’s engagement with a mythic past. First staged in 1947, in All My Sons Miller was referencing the second world war. In this production, no specific war is mentioned, nor is a specific time period evoked by the scenery design or costumes. As such, the play feels set in a different and unspecified time, creating distance between the world of the play and the spectator.
This technique is employed by Miller in The Crucible, which critiques 1950s McCarthyism by setting a play during the Salem witch trials in late 17th-century Massachusetts.
This is precisely how Greek tragedies were set: in a distant, mythic past. This allowed spectators in ancient times to reflect on the themes and ideas of the play in relation to their own world, without the play coming across as too on the nose or moralising.
With All My Sons, what becomes striking is how apposite the play is in relation to our world: to what extent will we allow capitalism to go unchecked? How does the society work if people are not accountable for their actions? And to what extent can other people’s bad decisions be used to justify our own?
Like a Greek tragedy, this production picks at a societal scab and forces us to confront the raw wound beneath. All My Sons is an excellent example of contemporary theatre engaging with historic theatre traditions to mesmerising effect.
All My Sons is on at the Wyndham Theatre, London until March 7 2026.
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Will Shüler does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.