ALL MY SONS Reviews

Yes, please! I'm going next month and would love to read the reviews/press.

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I'm also interested in what the press will say.

I saw it a few weeks ago and wasn't all that impressed. Lithgow, Weist, and Wilson were wonderful, but Holmes fell flat. She overacted the hell out of it. And the concept left a bit to be desired- the overbearing music began to drive me crazy by the second half. While the opening tableau/welcome was a great idea, it just seemed to conceptually unravel from there.

New York Press.com is Positive:

'...Brecht is known for his “alienation effect,” and in that sense, Holmes certainly keeps it all at mind’s length, estranged from McBurney’s eye-opening sojourn into the soul of American tragedy. Fortunately there are three majestic pillars—more if you count the phenomenal supporting cast—to prop it up.'

http://www.nypress.com/blogx/display_blog.cfm?bid=93970631

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Updated On: 10/16/08 at 02:15 PM

I saw it last Friday and I thought Katie did a decent job. At times there was the idealistic Joey Potter emerging However, she was overshadowed by Patrick, John and Diane who give amazing performances.

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This is a September video.

Variety is Very Positive:

'While this is very much a naturalistic American drama in the mid-20th century mold, Miller made no secret of his Greco-Ibsen influences. McBurney acknowledges those diverse traditions as well as more experimental forms. He shows us the tricks and mechanics of theater, uses film devices like underscoring and projections to intensify drama or foster evocative connections, and coaxes layered interpretations from the actors that embrace grandiose, melodramatic theatricality on the surface while scratching away underneath to uncover the characters' wounded humanity in painfully real terms.

There's no playing it safe here on any level, yet the complex approach feels organic -- every unconventional touch serves to break open the drama, not simply to embellish it. Some no doubt will find the treatment overwrought, but like it or not, this is far more interesting than another reverential remount.'

http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117938725.html?categoryid=33&cs=1

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Word of Mouth is a flat out RAVE:

http://www.broadway.com/All-My-Sons/broadway_reviews/5013193

The Wall Street Journal is Very Negative:

'...I assume that Mr. McBurney is also responsible for some of the production's cartoonishly exaggerated acting -- he goes in for caricature, especially when portraying small-town Americans -- and I further suspect that he encouraged both Mr. Lithgow and Dianne Wiest to overact in the first half of the play. Both of them find their footing in the last act, though, giving imposing performances that are more believable than the postmodern hubbub surrounding them, while Patrick Wilson, who plays Mr. Lithgow's surviving son, is at all times a rock of dramatic plausibility.

The presence in the cast of Mrs. Tom Cruise is doubtless responsible for the fact that "All My Sons" is currently the highest-grossing play on Broadway. Those who go to see it on her account, however, are in for a sad surprise. Like most of the pretty young screen things who have made Broadway debuts in recent seasons, Ms. Holmes is a creature of the camera who doesn't know the first thing about stage acting. Anyone misguided enough to make her professional stage debut on Broadway opposite Mr. Lithgow and Ms. Wiest in an Arthur Miller play is, of course, asking for trouble, and Ms. Holmes gets it in spades: Unable to fill a large theater with the sound of her voice, she is reduced to dull ranting. Perhaps she might have come off better in a different show, but in this one she looks like a well-meaning amateur.'

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122420282846543063.html

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Talkin' Broadway is Very Negative (and Murray even manages to sneak in his requisite bashing of John Doyle):

'...Unfortunately, McBurney's innovations don't draw us closer to these people - they push us away. Lithgow's opening speech invokes the play as an abstract object lesson, not an exploration of the ways that guilt and grief may intermingle. Projections (by Finn Ross for Mesmer) expand brief snatches of recollection into stage-filling cinematics, redirecting your focus from the words to the visuals; soupy underscoring (from sound designers Christopher Shutt and Carolyn Downing) gives even the soberest moments an unavoidable, filmic hokeyness. Even the ultraminimalist set (by Tom Pye, also the costume designer) looks to have been composed of remnants from the most recent revival of Our Town.

Worse yet, the performers have been directed to look at each other as little as possible, and look at us as much as possible. While this is ostensibly to highlight their isolation from each other, it does little more than isolate them from us, destroying Miller's vision of everyone being a part of the human family. We are not all a part of the same John Doyle musical...'

http://www.talkinbroadway.com/world/AllMySons2008.html

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Ben Brantley at the New York Times is Very Negative:

'...Finding a stylized acting approach that matches the dark-gray atmosphere isn’t easy, and few of the cast members succeed. Most of them appear to have been encouraged to go for the sinister, whether the scene asks for it or not. Damian Young, as the Kellers’ neighbor, a disenchanted doctor, and Christian Camargo, as Ann’s angry brother, deliver their big monologues with the half-mad intensity of supporting players in a Vincent Price movie.

Ms. Wiest assumes a glazed demeanor and reproachful stare, becoming Joe’s conscience incarnate or a Cassandra according to Norman Rockwell. (She drops her g’s, Sarah Palin style, to convey Kate’s hometown folksiness.) And while Ann is supposed to arrive at the Keller household with high hopes and good intentions, Ms. Holmes delivers most of her lines with meaningful asperity, italicizing every word. This Ann is straight from the school of the Erinyes (those avenging furies from Greek mythology), and I didn’t believe for a second that she really loved the honorable, naïve Chris.

Mr. Wilson and Mr. Lithgow, actors of strong and confident naturalism, come off better, especially in their scenes with each other. In Joe and Chris’s big Oedipal showdown in the second act, these actors powerfully evoke those painful moments when a family quarrel can feel like an earthquake.

It’s the only scene where Mr. McBurney’s shaping concept feels fully justified, where you see how the production might have worked. Mostly this vaunting interpretation falls into that same limbo between intention and execution where so many of Miller’s baffled American souls find themselves.'

http://theater2.nytimes.com/2008/10/17/theater/reviews/17sons.html

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Updated On: 10/16/08 at 10:22 PM

TheaterMania's review:

http://www.theatermania.com/content/news.cfm/story/15805

"Breathtaking performances by John Lithgow, Dianne Wiest, Patrick Wilson, and, yes, Katie Holmes in the revival of Arthur Miller's profoundly moving 1947 play All My Sons instantly tag the production at the Gerald Schoenfeld as an absolute must-see."

This one says that the actors have great physical contact/connection to each other--in contrast to the talkinbroadway review...

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TheaterMania is a Rave:

http://www.theatermania.com/content/news.cfm/story/15805

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