Lines of dialogue that kicked the premiere audience in the guts can, within a few years, need a footnote, so quickly does historical context change.

All My Sons
Old Vic, London

Lines of dialogue that kicked the premiere audience in the guts can, within a few years, need a footnote, so quickly does historical context change. While even the greatest plays are to some extent overtaken by events, Arthur Miller’s 1947 drama All My Sons seems, at each seeing, to have kept pace with them.

Joe Keller, whose decision to ignore hairline cracks in airplane parts led to the deaths of many US Air Force men, is a protagonist who seems an avatar for the mortgage lenders, bankers, tower-block builders, CEOs, and princes of the Church, who, in successive scandals, have argued that overlooking a risk does not make you responsible for its consequences. Joe’s exoneration in a trial that sent an underling to prison gives him an even greater resonance with some headlines.

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