Arthur Miller's great play, All My Sons, now on Broadway, is given a great disservice in a destructive, misconceived production directed by Simon McBurney. He seems to have no faith in the play and none in the fine actors who portray the members of the Keller family in this post-World War II drama about the devastating consequences of greed.
After an inventive opening filled with a powerful audio and visual explosion, and the play starting on a marvelous, barren, minimal set by Tom Pye with excellent lighting by Paul Anderson, a distracting, annoying, and ultimately irritating soundscape is slipped in and runs throughout the emotional sections of the play, underscoring the action and words like a bad television drama. Then visual projections of war, and other subjects are projected on the huge backdrop, cutting into the biting dialogue that Miller wrote, filtering the performances -- like looking at art through dirty glasses.
The four leads in the show are quite good: John Lithgow as the father communicates his troubled internal life quite well, Katie Holmes is beautiful and convincing as the dead son's fiancé, Patrick Wilson ably fulfills the role of the extant son, Damian Young and Becky Ann Baker are fine as the doctor next door and his wife, and Dianne Wiest gives an award-caliber performance as the wife and mother who denies reality. The neighbors to the left, played by Jordan Gelber and Danielle Ferland are caricatures from a cartoon, and McBurney introduces a crowd of useless supernumeraries who wander on and off the stage from time to time. As we say in New England, it's wicked weird to see this gut-wrenching play diluted by the distracting soundtrack and visuals. All it needs is the play -- "Das ding an sich"-- and we'd have some great theater.
