Belgian super director Ivo van Hove got his big English-language break with 2014’s astounding production of Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge, and a couple of years later lucky New Yorkers got a deluxe production of The Crucible that scored warm reviews (maddeningly it never played here despite its largely British and Irish cast).
Since then, Van Hove’s career has gone into overdrive and he’s famous dedicated a lot of time to making stage adaptations of classic films, to mercurial effect.
It would be entirely misunderstanding Van Hove to imagine that he’s returning to the safety of Miller as a result of last year’s colossal West End flop Opening Night. But there will certainly be those glad he’d doing so as he tackles the US playwright’s first big hit, All My Sons.
Set in 1943, the drama concerns Joe Keller, an upstanding pillar of the local community whose business partner has been found guilty of selling faulty parts to the US Airforce. Joe has escaped any blame. But should he have?
Van Hove has assembled a proper A-grade cast here, with US star Bryan Cranston – who led the director’s 2017 hit Network – as Joe, with the wondrous Marianne Jean-Baptiste as his wife Kate and Paapa Essiedu as their son Chris.
