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Arthur Miller’s “All My Sons” is back on Broadway, this time in a straightforward, sober-sided Roundabout Theatre Company production directed by Jack O’Brien, performed on an ultra-realistic set and starring Tracy Letts and Annette Bening. It’s one of the best Miller revivals I’ve ever seen, a staging so magnetic that it overwhelmed my lingering doubts about a play that can feel preachy when it isn’t done as well as this….
While it’s no masterpiece, “All My Sons” is soundly built—the plot twists are managed with curve-hugging skill—and wholly stageworthy. Ms. Bening, who hasn’t been seen on Broadway in 31 years, gives a performance of plain-spoken force that makes you long for her to take up residence there permanently. As for Mr. Letts, the author of “August: Osage County” and the foremost character actor on the American stage today, he’s breathtaking as Joe, whom he plays not as a monster of bourgeois greed but as a regular guy of the utmost ordinariness who merely did what he thought he had to do. How can he possibly act as well as he writes? If you think life is fair, don’t see this show….
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Read the whole thing here.A trailer for the Broadway revival of All My Sons: