Eve Matheson as Kate and David Hounslow as Joe
Queen’s Theatre, Hornchuch 2022
Photo: Mark Sepple
046 – All My Sons, by Arthur Miller
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It is a sunny Sunday morning in the Summer of 1946. In the garden of Joe and Kate Keller’s home in the outskirts of an all-American town stands the broken trunk of slender apple tree. There has been a storm in the night that has struck the tree, an event that Kate Keller takes as a sign, because the tree was planted as a memorial to their son Larry who was reported missing in action in the war three years ago, and whom Kate wants to believe will yet return home alive. But there is a greater storm brewing that over the course of this long Sunday will destroy the fragile peace of this family.
This is the setting of Arthur Miller’s breakthrough play All My Sons, which Miller started to write during the early 1940s before it premiered on Broadway in January 1947. Despite some who criticized what they deemed the play’s unpatriotic sentiments, it ran for nearly three years, winning the Tony award for best author and earning Miller life-changing amounts of fame and money. Like some of Miller’s other work All My Sons is both a searing family tragedy and an exploration of the moral challenges that he believed were inherent in the American Dream.
Douglas Rintoul recently directed All My Sons at the Queen’s Theatre in Hornchurch, where he has been Artistic Director for the past seven years. Douglas joins me to share his insights on this devastatingly powerful play.
Douglas Rintoul
Douglas Rintoul has recently been appointed the Chief Executive of the New Wolsey Theatre in Ipswich. For the past seven years he has been the Artistic Director of the Queen’s Theatre in Hornchurch, during which time the theatre won the London Theatre of the Year Stage Award 2020. He has also been a freelance director, an associate of Complicité, and a founder of the national touring theatre company Transport. His work has received no fewer than 24 Off West End Award nominations.
Selected credits as a director include: As You Like It (QTH and National Theatre); Abigail’s Party (QTH, Salisbury Playhouse, Derby Theatre and Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg) Macbeth (QTH and Derby Theatre); The Crucible (QTH, Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg and Selladoor); Made in Dagenham and Rope (QTH and New Wolsey Theatre); Much Ado About Nothing, In Basildon Love Letters, The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole The Musical, Misfits, The Hired Man (QTH); The Deep Blue Sea, All My Sons, Of Mice of Men (Watermill Theatre); Touched (Trafalgar Studios); and Elegy (Transport/Theate503).
Recommended Play
Douglas recommended Europe by David Greig
The Footnotes to our episode on All My Sons include Miller’s sources of the story in the play, observations on his critique of the American Dream, and the characters of Ann and George Deever.
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060 – A Streetcar Named Desire, by Tennessee Williams
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A Streetcar Named Desire is one of the towering masterpieces of American theatre, distinguished for its frank depiction of sexual compulsion, its lyrical language, and its poignant portrait of mental fragility, as well as the bitter clash between two of the greatest dramatic characters – the damaged and defiant Blanche Dubois and the unrestrained masculine power that is Stanley Kowalski.
As a new production opens in London’s West End, I’m delighted to be joined by Tennessee Williams expert, Professor Thomas Keith, to help survey this giant of a play.
059 – Paradise Now! , by Margaret Perry
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Margaret Perry’s new play Paradise Now! brings together a group of women who join a pyramid selling scheme promoting a range of essential oils that soothe a myriad of life’s stresses. The women hope that they will find cures to the challenges in their own lives, but the road to Paradise is not so sure and smooth.
Following its acclaimed run at the Bush Theatre in London, Margaret joins me to talk about her perceptive, funny and moving play.
058 – Noises Off, by Michael Frayn
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Michael Frayn’s classic comedy Noises Off is a work of theatrical genius. Its parody of a hapless acting troupe putting on a dreadful sex farce is itself delivered with extraordinary invention and precision. It has been called the funniest British comedy ever written, and now arrives in London’s West End in a sparkling 40th anniversary production directed by Lindsay Posner.
Lindsay joins me to share his unique experience of this enduring comic masterpiece.
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