NT Live: All My Sons

Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad) and Marianne Jean-Baptiste (Hard Truths) feature in a five-star, triumphantly acclaimed new production of Arthur Miller’s classic play, from visionary director Ivo Van Hove (A View from the Bridge).

In the sunny backyard of an Ohio home in 1947, Joe and Kate Keller appear to be the living embodiment of post-war success. Joe is a self-made industrialist who has built a thriving business from the ground up, providing a comfortable life for his family. However, beneath this veneer of suburban contentment lies a structural rot that threatens to bring their world crashing down.

Bryan Cranston delivers a tour de force performance as Joe Keller, a man whose genial, "hail-fellow-well-met" exterior masks a devastating secret. During the war, Joe’s factory shipped a batch of faulty aircraft cylinder heads, an act of negligence that led to the deaths of twenty-one pilots. While his business partner, Steve Deever, languishes in prison for the crime, Joe has maintained his innocence and rebuilt his reputation. Yet, as the play unfolds over a single, high-tension day, the ghosts of the past refuse to remain buried.

The emotional core of the production is further anchored by Marianne Jean-Baptiste as Kate Keller. She is a woman gripped by a fierce, almost transcendental denial, refusing to accept that her eldest son, Larry, was lost in action during the war. Her grief is not merely personal; it is a desperate shield, for to admit Larry is dead would be to admit that he might have been a victim of his own father’s compromise.

When their younger son, Chris (Paapa Essiedu), announces his intention to marry Larry’s former fiancée, Ann Deever (Hayley Squires), he inadvertently acts as the catalyst for a moral reckoning.  As Ann’s brother George arrives with fresh accusations from their father in prison, the Kellers’ carefully constructed reality begins to fracture.

Directed by the visionary Ivo van Hove, this National Theatre Live production strips Arthur Miller’s classic play of its mid-century domesticity, transforming it into a lean, intellectually rigorous tragedy.  Van Hove’s staging highlights the "disturbingly prescient" nature of the text, drawing uncomfortable parallels between Joe Keller’s profit-driven justifications and modern corporate accountability.

This is a rare opportunity to see an Academy Award winner at the height of his powers.  All My Sons is a haunting, five-star theatrical event that asks how far a person will go to protect their family, and what happens when the price of that protection is the soul of a nation.  Do not miss your chance to witness this "stupendously well-acted" masterpiece on the big screen.  Reserve your seat now.

Filmed live from the West End, Paapa Essiedu (I May Destroy You), Tom Glynn-Carney (House of the Dragon), and Hayley Squires (I, Daniel Blake) also feature in this disturbingly prescient play.