Jessica Robinson, Richard Dey, Jeffrey Thomas, Emma Kinane in 'All my sons' at Circa TheatreJoe and Kate Keller are liv­ing a ver­sion of the Amer­ic­an Dream. They have a com­fort­able life­style, a lov­ing son, nice new neigh­bours. How­ever there is a dark event in their past involving their old neigh­bours which will impact on their future.

Arthur Miller­’s Tony Award win­ning play was first per­formed in 1947.  It’s an eleg­antly struc­tured script, that twists and turns as it unfolds the story before us.

Dir­ect­or Susan Wilson has assembled a cast who bring their A‑game for this pro­duc­tion.  The four main cast mem­bers, Emma Kin­ane (as Kate Keller), Jef­frey Thomas (as Joe Keller), Richard Dey (as Chris Keller), and Jes­sica Robin­son (as Ann Deever) hold the shift­ing rela­tion­ships between their char­ac­ters very strongly.  A par­tic­u­lar high­light is the scene near the end of Act 2 between Thomas and Dey. (You’ll know which one it is.) Kin­ane is tre­mend­ous as the moth­er, say­ing one thing, mean­ing some­thing dif­fer­ent. Thomas is best when play­ing the gen­i­al fath­er, jok­ing with his neigh­bours and son.

Sup­port­ing char­ac­ters feel like they have a life out­side of the time they are on the stage they are presen­ted so clearly.  Gav­in Ruther­ford (as Dr Jim Bayliss) is weary; Chris­toph­er Brougham (as Frank Lubey) is peev­ish. Erin Banks (as Sue Bayliss) is won­der­fully vicious; Lyndsey Garner (as Lydia Lubey) is light and viva­cious.  Beck Taylor (as Bert (a child, he altern­ates nights with Dino Karsan­id­is)) is play­ful and hope­ful. Martyn Wood (as George Deever) is by turns agit­ated, resigned, won­der­ing. The play pivots on his char­ac­ter.

The oth­er ele­ments of the pro­duc­tion are also clearly presen­ted. The set by John Hodgkins looks lovely at first glance. A second glance notices the decay and empti­ness. Gareth Hobbs’ sound design sup­ports the drama on stage as does Ulli Briese’s light­ing design. Paul Jenden’s cos­tume design has bright fab­rics, with a subtle theme that indic­ates where the story is going.

Excel­lent. Recom­men­ded.