ALL MY SONS To 14 November.
Leicester.
ALL MY SONS
by Arthur Miller.
Curve To 14 November 2009.
Tue-Sat 7.30pm Mat Wed & Sat 2.15pm.
Audio-described 4 Nov 2.15pm (+ Touch Tour 12.45pm), 6 Nov (+Touch Tour 6pm).
BSL Signed 4 Nov 7.30pm.
Captioned 5 Nov, 7 Nov 2.15pm.
Runs 2hr 25min One interval.
TICKETS: 0116 242 3595.
www.curveonline.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 15 October.
What you see is a lot of what you get.
With revivals of Arthur Miller’s play in Bolton and Leicester, plus J B Priestley’s An Inspector Calls at London’s Novello Theatre, the message that wealthy manufacturers need to recognise they are part of a society beyond the family walls, or garden hedge, is being made loud and clear.
The Keller garden’s extensive in Walter Meierjohann’s production at Leicester’s Curve, fronting a long single-storey building that combines a sense of earned affluence and restricted ambition. Generally, this Curve production’s strongest in charting Miller’s play through theatrical means.
Joe Keller is a muscly worker made good in Ian Redford’s performance, beginning at ease as he sits talking in his vest to neighbour Jim Bayliss. As exposure of his past comes closer Joe presents a more formal front to the world, adding a shirt, then jacket and tie, unaware of the coming crisis in his life. Meanwhile Phil Cheadle as his idealist son Chris moves from neatness to increasing dishabille as the moral screw turns.
Increasing the role of Bert, a neighbouring child who Joe pretends is part of a detective force, gives him something of the role of the children in Daldry’s Inspector Calls, entering at the start, examining the lightning-struck tree, then watching Joe from the roof-top.
Such devices, though, can become excessive. In the last act the house hovers overhead, though it’s not material wealth that does for Joe. But it’s in the production’s view of Ann Deever, who’d been set to marry Joe’s son Larry, now dead, that Meierjohann is most excessive.
Lisa Jackson plays well, but, for much of the time as a girl from a colour advertising feature, all giggles and swirls (there’s often a frenetic sense to movement, reflecting inner turmoil or merely allowing a large space to be covered within a few lines). Jackson certainly captures American Dream cover-girl optimism for much of the play, but the interpretation seems imposed on the play.
Diana Kent’s Kate registers throughout, her slim frame the expression of constant angst, and while the production can stumble over its own theatricality, it’s a lively enough account of Miller’s early success.
Joe Keller: Ian Redford.
Kate Keller: Diana Kent.
Chris Keller: Phil Cheadle.
Ann Deever: Lisa Jackson.
George Deever: Alasdair Craig.
Dr Jim Bayliss: John Dougall.
Sue Bayliss: Daniele Lydon.
Frank Lubey: David Fynn.
Lydia Lubey: Emily Houghton.
Bert: Zach Morley/Henry Rowley/Sam Sutton.
Director: Walter Meierjohann.
Designer: Steffi Wurster.
Lighting: Mike Gunning.
Sound: Fergus O’Hare.
Costume: Jean-Marc Puissant.
Dialect coach: Sally Hague.
2009-10-19 21:28:15