Review: All My Sons

Bryan Cranston leads a powerhouse cast in Ivo Van Hove’s definitive Arthur Miller revival

“Dollars and cents, nickels and dimes; war and peace…” the arrival of Arthur Miller’s All My Sons in New York’s Coronet theatre in 1946 must have hit like lightning – a play about the real cost of a war the world was still reeling from. Rarely out of production ever since, the strings that tie it to its roots have stretched and knotted; a razor-edged American tragedy about a time and place that either feels critically distant or worryingly close, depending on how it’s staged.

Updating his own 2014 Young Vic revival, director Ivo Van Hove skilfully manages both at once in his landmark new production at Wyndam’s Theatre; as narrowly specific as it is devastatingly universal. Almost 80 years on from its debut, All My Sons has never felt fresher.

To tell the story is to give too much away – with most of the play’s big themes unfolding gradually, one at a time. Van Hove opens on his only big special effect: a tree falling in a shower of red petals as grieving mother Kate (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) weathers a storm alone at night. She’s mourning the death of her son Larry, lost somewhere over the Pacific three years ago, but also not willing to believe he’s really gone. The rest of the action takes place the next day in the same spot – dad Joe (Bryan Cranston), second son Chris (Paapa Essiedu), Larry’s ex Ann (Hayley Squires) and her brother George (Tom Glynn-Carney) all struggling to either move on from the past or to reopen old wounds.

The joy and pain of Miller’s play is in the slow reveal, but also in the richness of the smaller parlour stories circling the main tragedy. It’s Ibsen in an all-American backyard, and Van Hove leans into the classicism by isolating it: the fallen tree and a giant orb of light the only backdrop on a frighteningly stark stage. It’s a powerful statement of intent for the text and cast, and both hold up here better than ever.

Wearing the same shoes as Ed Begley, Edward G. Robinson, Burt Lancaster, John Lithgow, David Suchet, Bill Pullman and more, Bryan Cranston gives us a Joe that feels all but definitive. Here we have a funny, genial, eminently likeable man whose sins are buried so deep even he can’t find them anymore. There’s a touch of Lionel Barrymore to Cranston’s delivery, with a warmth that ends up burning the more it chills. As a portrait of gently broken strength, it’s hard to imagine anyone doing it better.

Hard, too, to cast a better family around him. Paapa Essiedu is electric as Joe’s younger opposite; Marianne Jean-Baptiste transforming a role all too often pushed into the wings. Running without an interval, Van Hove lets his players sink their teeth into the heart and horror of text; Jonny Cash and Leonard Cohen playing out brief time jumps between the acts, the bare stage always occupied and evolving. By the time the play reaches boiling point, the whole theatre is vibrating. This is a historical tragedy that can’t be safely left in the past; a deeply American masterpiece that roars louder than ever in the West End.

All My Sons is now booking until March 2026 at the Wyndham’s Theatre in London. Find tickets here