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Pre show notes for All My Sons
Welcome to these pre-show notes for All My Sons, by Arthur Miller, directed for the Rose Theatre by Michael Rudman. The audio described performance takes place next Saturday, November 19th. There’s a touch tour at 1pm, these notes are broadcast live through your headsets, incorporating any changes, and the performance itself begins at 2.30. The play lasts for two hours and twenty minutes, including one 20-minute interval.
The printed programme tells us that Arthur Miller began writing this play during the Second World War, the subject matter suggested by a conversation in his own living room. He wrote ‘like everyone else I knew that profiteering on a vast scale was rampant’. Among the scandals of the time was that of the Wright Aeronautical Corporation of Ohio, which had not only exchanged the ‘condemned’ tags on defective engines for ‘passed’ tags, but bribed army inspectors to ship these failed machines out to the armed forces fighting Hitler in Europe. It may have been stories like this that led Miller to create All My Sons.
The action is set somewhere in America in the years immediately after the Second World War. As we enter the auditorium, we are faced with a scene of calm prosperity. The back walls of the wide hexagonal stage are hung with broad strips of crimson fabric, which alternate with the bare black theatre wall. At the back of the stage stands a wide clapboard house two storeys high, with a broad verandah running along the front.
The wooden walls are a buttery cream colour, and the tall sash windows are painted white, and flanked by green shutters. There are two windows on the ground floor, one each side of the door, which has frosted glass panels, and there’s a third window on the left. Four more span the storey above, and an attic window nestles beneath the pitch of the roof. Most of these windows are open in the summer heat.
A small square table stands on the right of the verandah, covered with a green check cloth, and on the left of the door are a tall wooden rocking chair and a white wicker garden chair.
White railings run along the edge of the verandah. Three steps in the centre lead down onto the green lawn, where a row of pots line the base of the house, with healthy-looking broad leaved plants, laurel, and honeysuckle winding up the white trellis posts at the two front corners of the porch. There are two small black carriage lamps above the posts, and another to the right of the door.
On each side of the house, a white picket fence stretches away to the right or left. On the left, three trellis arches are covered with foliage, and the branch of a large tree stretches out from the side wall towards the house, at first floor level, casting dappled shade on the scene below. An old basketball board lies propped against the fence below, with a black rubbish bin nearby.
The lawn is littered with comfortable garden furniture, like an outdoor room in a climate where long dry summers are expected. A striped canvas director’s chair stands in front of the steps, with a green painted stool, and a small wooden table to hand, with a glass and some newspapers on it. To the left stands a white wicker garden chair, and further left, a white metal couch with teal cushions, and a white wicker coffee table nearby. Two low wooden benches stand at the front edge of the lawn, with a bed of small plants at their feet.
On the far left, an open fronted wooden lean to contains a scatter of garden tools – a rake, a hoe, a watering can and a garden fork – and at the front left stands the wreck of a slender young tree, its trunk snapped and a litter of foliage around it on the neat green lawn. A nearby wheelbarrow is laden with twigs.
In this garden we meet the Keller family, their neighbours and some visitors.
All wear the clothes of the late 1940s. The women wear calf length dresses cinched in at the waist, with square padded shoulders and elbow length sleeves. On their feet, the chunky shoes of the time with thick stacked heels, or peep-toe sandals, where the front of the shoe was cut away to reveal just a glimpse of toe. Their hair is worn long, lifted straight back from the forehead and clipped into slides before falling in waves to the shoulders. The men wear wide high-waisted trousers with braces, short sleeved shirts, and loose baggy jackets with classic lace-up shoes.
Joe Keller is a shambling man in his sixties. Amiable, hunched and balding, he wanders about his garden in a pale blue short sleeved shirt worn over a white round necked vest, his loose grey flannels held up with braces. He peers over his spectacles at the others with a vaguely benevolent air – an ageing man, content in his own garden, happy enough on the whole to flop into a chair and stay there.
His wife Kate is a good ten years younger, a tall handsome woman with a mane of chestnut hair tied back at shoulder height and tumbling down her back. She has strong features and a wide mouth which easily splits into a ready smile. Lydia is all hospitable energy as she greets her guests, bustling into the house and out again, a big white apron tied over her fitted dress, which is grey with sprigs of red flowers. On her feet are low heeled brown peep toe sandals.
Their son Chris is about 30, a compact young man with neatly clipped brown hair and a pale face. His muscles are toned and there’s a tattoo on his right forearm. He moves about with an air of contained energy, so that, however relaxed he appears, when he sits down you somehow expect him to be up again very soon. Chris wears an old burgundy polo shirt over tan trousers and polished brown lace-up shoes.
He invites a former neighbour, Anne Deever, to stay. She is in her mid twenties, slender, with elfin features and pale blonde hair. Anne runs in, vivacious and excited, dressed for the visit in a blue summer dress striped with turquoise, grey and navy, her hair in a white headband. Anne’s eyebrows are plucked into perfect narrow arcs above her big blue eyes.
Some neighbours call by, each usually alone. Sue Bayliss is about the same age and build as Anne, her face also framed by pale blonde wavy hair, but she lacks Anne’s excitement and energy. Lydia’s expression is slightly world-weary as she surveys her neighbours. Her dress is patterned in beige and rust.
Sue’s husband, Jim, is neat and anonymous in brown trousers and a white and tan checked shirt. His dark hair is short and his moustache neatly clipped.
We also meet Frank Lubey and his wife Lydia. Frank is tall and thickset with black hair and moustache. He strides in cheerfully, dressed to relax in a big beige cardigan with brown suede shoulder patches, fawn trousers and white lace up shoes.
His wife Lydia is smiling and vivacious as she runs in to find him. She’s stylishly dressed in a white silky short sleeved shirt and wide-leg peach trousers, which drape down from her narrow waist. Her oval face is carefully made up and her blonde hair is shiny. She wears low heeled brown sandals.
Ann’s brother George Deever turns up uninvited. He’s a saturnine man in his thirties, thin and serious with burning dark eyes. Unlike the others, he seems dressed for the city in a grey flannel suit and white shirt, with black lace-up shoes. His black tie is askew, and a soft grey hat planted on his head. His skin is very pale and five o’clock shadow darkens his jaw.
The cast is completed by a small boy named Bert. Bert is about wight years old and dashed in wearing jeans, white and yellow striped tee shirt, white trainers, and a blue baseball cap jammed on his light brown hair.
Cast and production credits
Joe Keller is played by David Horovitch
Kate Penny Downie
Chris Alex Waldmann (who played King Henry VI in the Wars of the Roses last year)
Anne Deever Francesca Zoutewelle
Sue Bayliss Alison Pargeter
Jim Bayliss David Partridge
Frank Lubey William Meredith
Lydia Lubey Grace Carter
George Deever Edward Harrison
Bert Samson Marracino or Sam Stewart
Sound designer Martin Hodgson
Music composed by Matthew Scott
Lighting David Howe
Set designer Michael Taylor
Director Michael Rudman