Make no mistake, this  production was a big call by Sutton Arts. It is wordy, and worthy, and played out on a single set. Its themes of  the American Dream, the anatomy of truth, and fidelity are more fully realised in “Death of a Salesman” written two years later. His exploration of visceral drama is saved for “The Crucible” ,so this was an intriguing choice of production.

This was Miller’s first hit production following the flop of his first play “The Man Who Had All the Luck failed on Broadway, lasting only four performances. Miller wrote All My Sons as a final attempt at writing a commercially successful play , peeling back the specious veneer  of the American dream, exposing how  guilt and wrongdoing  can rot a family from the inside, tainting  everything they touch.

All My Sons is based upon a true story. In 1941–43 the Wright Aeronautical Corporation based in Ohio had conspired with army inspection officers to approve defective aircraft engines destined for military use. It explores how two partners in a business can have to  take moral and legal responsibility for the other.  Idealism is the problem.

Written in 1947 The criticism of that idealism , was one reason why Arthur Miller was called to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee during the 1950s during the McCarthy purge era.

 Ricard Clarke’s Joe Keller  is an object lesson in good acting. We watch him unfold and unravel before our eyes from businessman, husband and father  to a flawed fraudster. He has lost his one son in a wartime plane crash, then loses his other son as his exposure as  the peddler of faulty plane parts emerges. Those parts resulted in twenty one crashes with the resultant fatalities representing “All of our sons”

Chris Commander, as Joe’s surviving son forensically unpicks both his father’s commercial wrong doing and his status as head of household.

But it is Liz Berriman as  matriarch  Kate Keller  who dominates the evening. She combines an innate warmth with a nervy anxiety suggested by the way she encases herself in her housecoat as if it were a  flak jacket , a protective shield from all that is exploding around her.. In one way she  is  also the “villain” of the piece in that she puts the sanctity of the home before ethics, yet  Berriman’s  homely myopic innocence wins through. Hers is a  gorgeously calibrated Kate, guilt manifests differently with her,  in fragile optimism and occasional flashes of anger.

As Anne’s  lawyer brother George , Harry Robins precisely shows a hunger for revenge on the Keller family melting under the influence of their hospitality.

Its attack on the probity of America is a bludgeoning, and so too is Miller’s  characterisation of women. Anne’s  feminine allure is specifically drawn, but no space is given to her character and the assumption that she would “jump ship” from one brother to another romantically feels clunky. MIller’s  eye for a pretty woman is evidenced by his marriage to Marilyn Monroe. But here Amy White plays Anne as the girl next door, not a femme fatale.

This is a strong cast, and my only reservation bout the evening was the frequency of shouting. Don’t shout, act, this isn’t East Enders. However this was th first night of the first production after the summer, a time when it can be  difficult during rehearsals  to hve the cast all together, let alone fine tune a directorial message.

The single set, an exterior porch, scene of an earlier storm works well, the only lighting demands are for the  twilight act from daylight. Curiously  the sound eschews contemporary music, if ever a chorus of the “Marines hymn” was required, it was here.

Written seventy years ago, Joes exclamation that what he was doing was “just business” and his observation that not a single military vehicle left a factory without having been paid for first resonates as the profits in  British, Israeli, American and south African Arms companies today are boosted by our war in Ukraine. What gives the play its momentum is the force of Miller’s message. In part the play is an assault on the twin American gods of family and profit: Joe’s last line of defence is: “I’m in business.” But this is not simply a play about war profiteering. Miller’s real theme is the way a distorted individualism has replaced the idea of responsibility to the community.

Sutton arts deliver a Miller for our times, In an era of fake news and moral uncertainty, this  production of Arthur Miller’s play rings as true as ever At a time of flux and fakery when lies masquerade as truth, we find reassurance in Miller’s moral rigour and appeal to our collective human conscience.