By Neil Durham

WORTH A LOOK? *****

WHEN? Saturday 15 November, opens 21 November and runs through 7 March 2026 RUNTIME: 135 minutes (no interval)

Cranston (from TV’s Breaking Bad) plays under-fire US businessman Joe Keller post World War 2 in this Arthur Miller classic and occasionally sports a red baseball cap that can’t help but bring to mind the current US President.

• Read on for reasons including how this exploration of the dark side of the American dream is the best production of this classic we’ve ever seen

Director Ivo Van Hove (Opening Night, Gielgud Theatre) gives us a minimal setting and the production opens with a storm which Keller’s wife Kate (played stubbornly by Marianne Jean-Baptiste) finds herself in which throws rose petals across the stage and fells a tree symbolising the family’s air force son missing in action and presumed dead by all but his mother.

Cranston’s Joe is initially good-humoured as he contemplates the storm’s damage in his back garden with his neighbours and we slowly learn he was was exonerated after being charged with knowingly shipping defective aircraft engine cylinder heads which killed 21 pilots during World War 2.

Less lucky was his partner and former neighbour Steve Deever who was jailed and his daughter Ann, the girlfriend of Joe’s son Larry, is back in town to visit the family including Joe’s younger son Chris.

Chris is played by Paapa Essiedu, who won last year’s Best Theatre Actor monsta, and plans to ask Ann to marry him although any acceptance would crush his mother who refuses to believe her son Larry won’t return.

We last saw Sally Field in this Arthur Miller play at the Old Vic in 2019 and this version is even better realised than that was.

The tension is continually ratcheted up throughout this thrilling production as Tom Glynn-Carney (TV’s House Of The Dragon and The Glass Menagerie, Duke Of York’s Theatre) emerges in a hoodie from the audience looking like a ghost and threatens to bring the house of cards to the ground as Ann’s lawyer brother George with new evidence.

Hayley Squires as Ann is sensitive and forever conscious about the difficult path she has to negotiate and it’s only in the denouement that she reluctantly delivers the explosive blow.

Cranston and Essiedu’s final scenes are simply some of the finest we think we’ll ever see on a stage and they are clearly 2 of the world’s best actors at the top of their quite considerable game.

Van Hove judges the material sensitively and has cast brilliantly to make this production of a tale based upon a true story, which Miller’s then-mother-in-law pointed out in an Ohio newspaper, unforgettable.

The decision to run straight through without interval works here because there is simply no let up to the rollercoaster ride the audience witnesses.

All My Sons is 5-star material about the dark side of the American dream and this is the best production of it we’ve ever seen and its horror will linger long in our minds.

• Main pictures via Facebook courtesy All My Sons Tickets
• Have you seen a Bryan Cranston or Paapa Essiedu show before and what did you think of this 1? Let us know what you thought in the comments below
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