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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Douglas
067 – Red Pitch by Tyrell Williams
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Tyrell William’s award-winning, debut play Red Pitch is set on an inner-city football pitch in South London. It is a coming-of-age story, with teenage boys fighting to believe in their dreams, and to find a way up, and perhaps out, of their changing community. The play premiered at the Bush Theatre in London in February 2002, winning several awards, and is currently enjoying a sell-out revival at the Bush.
Tyrell Williams, and the show’s director, Daniel Bailey, join me to explore this joyful and poignant new play.
Photo by Helen Murray.
066 – The Pillowman by Martin McDonagh
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Martin McDonagh’s 2004 play The Pillowman is an unsettling mix of gruesome fairy tales, child abuse, and murder, overlaid with McDonagh’s signature black humour. McDonagh’s blend of extreme violence and ironic comedy divides opinion, although the popularity of the current revival of the play in London’s West End is testimony to its enduring fascination.
I am joined in this episode by Professor Eamonn Jordan, to help us come to terms with the impact and intent of McDonagh’s work.
065 – Accidental Death of an Anarchist, by Dario Fo and Franca Rame
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Accidental Death of an Anarchist by Dario Fo and Franca Rame is both an hilarious farce and a biting satire. Written in 1970 as an “act of intervention” in response to the unexplained death of a prisoner in police custody in Milan, it became a huge global hit.
An acclaimed new adaptation that updates the setting and scandal to modern-day Britain is currently playing at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, and I’m delighted to be joined by its writer, Tom Basden, and the director, Daniel Raggett, to talk about their adaptation and the enduring relevance of Fo’s original.
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