ALL MY SONS-Nat'l Theater Live Stars Sally Field

Arthur Miller's Pulitzer Prize & Tony winning play "All My Sons" was revived in London at the Old Vic and on Broadway in 2019.  The star packed cast included Acad. Award winner Sally Field & Bill Pullman as Kate & Joe Keller, a longtime married couple with two sons.  Both sons served in WWII but only one returned home; Chris (Colin Morgan).  Kate remains aggressively steadfast that their elder son MIA will return home.  Kate turns vicious towards anyone suggesting otherwise.  Her hostility is vehemently aimed at Ann (Jenna Coleman, "Victoria") her missing son's sweetheart with unacceptable, disloyal designs on Chris.  The Nat'l Theater Live broadcast puts the audience front & center with the action making the filmed version come alive.  Miller's play contains a timeless theme of avarice at any cost but it's buried beneath an arid and dated Aristotelean plot.  "All My Sons" is Miller's 2nd play on Broadway.  His nascent brilliance is apparent but dims in comparison to his next play, "Death of a Salesman" and his legacy amongst America's most significant playwrights of the 20th C.  The fraught tensions spewed from ephiphanies of Joe's reprehensible actions & their consequences are ramrodded into Act II.  The emotional tolls feel off-set by the banal love story & family drama of Act I.  Pullman plays Joe through an irritating clenched jaw & whiney voice.  Field plays Kate with too much hostility & too little nuance as to vanquish empathy for her grief.  The supporting British actors, Moran & Coleman fare far better bringing an electricity to their characters & precise American accents.  Other minor roles include neighbors who are either facile or too fractious.  The underpinnings of Miller's skill with dialogue & despair are apparent but fraught with signs of fissures.