All My Sons ★★★★
When I reviewed the revival of Arthur Miller’s All My Sons less than month ago, I began this way: “The moment when Joe Keller speaks the three words that lend Arthur Miller’s All My Sons its title is, in this reviewer’s opinion, one of the most devastating in American dramatic literature. That’s if it’s not the downright most devastating. Because the 1947 All My Sons is, also in this reviewer’s opinion, Miller’s best play (peace to Death of a Salesmen, The Crucible, The Price partisans), I have seen All My Sons as often as I can and have never heard the three little words spoken without feeling as if they’ve been a deliberate unpulled punch in my gut.”
I’m quoting myself here, because I’ve had the good fortune to see what turns out to be a concurrent revival at the Old Vic, this one directed with heart-breaking perfection by Jeremy Herrin and starring the imported Sally Field and Bill Pullman as, respectively, Kate and Joe Keller. They share the stage with Colin Morgan as Benjamin Keller and Jenna Coleman (you know her in the title role of ITV’s Victoria) as Anne Deever, Ben’s about to be fiancée and his long-missing-in-action pilot brother Larry’s onetime intended. And nothing in this unflinching backward glance makes me change my mind about Miller’s extraordinary work.
Please don’t ask which version is better. In this instance comparisons are not only odious but unnecessary. Herrin’s take on the domestic tragedy in which Joe Keller is finally caught out on allowing his defective airplane parts to be delivered, while his hometown, home-spun family disintegrates only confirms from scene to unforgiving scene my conviction about the enduring All My Sons excellence.
Stateside, folks will want to know whether Field can be really, really liked in the complex Kate Keller part. The answer is that her Kate Keller is a forceful combination of grief and obduracy. She’s all grit and grace about the son she won’t consider dead. Were Field playing Kate on film, she’d be a good bet for a third Oscar. Pullman exhibits his impressive abilities right with hers, as do Morgan and Coleman.
All My Sons opened April 24, 2019 at the Old Vic (London) and runs through June 8. Tickets and information: oldvictheatre.com
Creditors ★★★★
Apparently, August Strindberg rated the enigmatic and 80-minutes-brief Creditors his masterpiece, an opinion that may be strong evidence that playwrights are not the best judge of their works. But perhaps Strindberg is right, and it’s simply that times and sensibilities have shifted since 1888, when he wrote this three-hander.
As Tekla (Dorothea Myer-Bennett) says during one of her two scenes, “Just because you can’t understand something doesn’t mean it isn’t true.” It’s not exactly that the tough-minded exchanges in Creditors are difficult to understand. It’s more like the arch discussions of love and what does or doesn’t constitute it isn’t expressed as lovers and ex-lovers might assert themselves in 2019.
Strindberg’s characters, presented in a new Howard Brenton adaptation, are Tekla, her current husband Adolf (James Sheldon) and ex-husband Gustaf (David Sturzaker). They participate in three rounds of quietly thundering one-on-one scenes. In the first (all three take place in the parlor of a seaside hotel), Gustaf chats with Tekla’s easily gulled current husband (and painter switching to sculpting) about the questionable love Adolf shares—or doesn’t—with Tekla. (By the way, Adolf has no idea who Gustav is.) In the second scene. Tekla confronts Adolf about his true feelings, and he retaliates about hers. In the third scene, Tekla and Gustav reunite to discuss how lasting this reunion might become.
The fascinating aspect of this Creditors resuscitation, as directed by Tom Littler, is that though the man-vs.-woman-vs.-man hammer-and-tonging—so familiar in Strindberg—may be line-by-line, word-by-word recherché now, the result is so pungent.
The tiny Jermyn Street Theatre immediately imposes intimacy on whatever is occurring on the narrow stage. With Creditors, it’s as if the audience is eavesdropping on three urgently whispered conversations about the elusive nature of love. The immediacy of everything Tekla, Adolf and Gustav say may be slippery to grasp today, but the underlying implications couldn’t be more present.
Creditors opened May 4, 2019 at the Jermyn Street Theatre (London) and runs through June 1. Tickets and information: jermynstreettheatre.co.uk
Sweet Charity ★★
Though not well-known in the States, Anne-Marie Duff is a leading local leading-lady—the sort about whom it’s said they can do anything. In Duff’s case, not quite. This time around, some wrong is being done. Okay, not everything right is being done.
The musical, famous for being built on the triple-threat (she dances, she sings, she acts) Gwen Verdon, has inherited a Charity Hope Valentine who can’t honestly dance, can sing some, and yes, can act, but those chops are put to an unfair test in this context.
The Sweet Charity history—in addition to being conceived as a Verdon vehicle—includes a book initially written by choreographer-director Bob Fosse (Verdon’s husband, of course) and then doctored by Neil “Doc” Simon, who gets full book credit. The story, as adapted from the Federico Fellini-Tullio Pinelli-Ennio Plaiano Nights of Cabiria (1957), embraces Charity, an endlessly hopeful dancehall girl with abysmal luck when it comes to men. Time and again she pins her heart on her sleeve only to have it ripped off. Nonetheless, she’s still hopes against hope.
Because Fosse and Simon had the indefatigably charming Verdon to front for them, they punted where the plot incidents were concerned. Not only did they have Verdon on hand to obscure their deficiencies, they also had a Cy Coleman-Dorothy Fields score with plenty of pathos and pizzazz—not the least of which percussive numbers included the raunchy “Hey, Big Spender” and the driving “There’s Gotta Be Something Better Than This.”
The score does its job with no problems, despite Duff’s only serviceable pipes and others in the cast doing well enough. The one number that really raises the relatively high Donmar Warehouse roof is the second-act opener, “Rhythm of Life,” wherein jazzman Coleman’s melody serves as a hot perch for Fields’ skip-along words. Forget the fact that the sequence is shoehorned into the proceedings. It offers one cast member the opportunity to shine. For the run, a different guest appears every week. I saw and heard Beverley Knight do the wailing—as well as the show-stealing.
On the other hand, Duff has her low point in the “I’m a Brass Band” routine, when Charity gets herself engaged to timid boyfriend Oscar Lindquist (Arthur Darvill, not bad as a secret cad). Because Duff can move, if not dance, she doesn’t do the latter. Instead, she races around, twirls a ribbon and grab two metal rods to bang on a column, among other inane activities.
Speaking of “There’s Gotta Be Something Better Than This”: Fosse and Simon had definite trouble finding the right Sweet Charity ending. Truth to tell, they never did. Now director Josie Rourke (this, her last Donmar Warehouse production as artistic director) and choreographer Wayne McGregor have located it. (Or is it someone else’s solution?) What’s on offer is an anthemic “Gotta Be Something Better” reprise for Duff and company. As a finale, it couldn’t be better than that.
