John Stanton and Janet Andrewartha. Photographer Earl Carter.

Arthur Miller returns to MTC

24 January 2000

All My Sons was the first great success of Arthur Miller's influential career, winning the 1947 Tony Award for the Best Play and the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award 1946/1947.

At the time, Arthur Miller wrote: "The audience sat in silence before the unwinding of All My Sons and gasped when they should have, and I tasted that power which is reserved, I imagine, for playwrights, which is to know that by one's invention a mass of strangers has been publicly transfixed."

Sixty years after it was first staged, and again at a time of war, the play's haunting questions remain equally relevant and equally unanswered as the story explores love, guilt and the corrupting power of greed.

Joe Keller (Logie-winner John Stanton) is alleged to have supplied World War II fighter planes with defective engines, leading to the deaths of innocent pilots – a crime for which his business partner took the fall.

One of Keller's sons, himself a pilot, is thought to have been killed in action. But his mother (AFI-nominee Janet Andrewartha) cannot accept his death and equally, cannot accept that her dead son's fiancee (Yesse Spence, Hitchcock Blonde) has transferred her affections to her other son (Matt Dyktynski, Japanese Story).

The confrontations that ensue lead to the uncovering of a shameful family secret. As Variety magazine commented: "With themes that obviously presage present events – when earnings-per-share drive corporate scandals, no-bid military contracts and complaints of inferior equipment or lack thereof for American troops – Miller continues to speak volumes."

Former MTC Associate Director Kate Cherry returns to direct All My Sons. Kate trained in the USA, and her knowledge of classic American writing has led to earlier sellout MTC productions including Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie and Sweet Bird of Youth; Edward Albee's The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? and Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. The Set and Costume Designer is Richard Roberts, Lighting Designer Jon Buswell, with music composed by Peter Farnan.

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