All My Sons returns with force on screen

All My Sons | in cinemas globally starting April 16, 2026

Sins of the father hit home as Brian Cranston leads a stark and resonant revival of gripping Miller revival

Some plays feel like period pieces. Others feel like they were written yesterday. All My Sons is firmly in the second camp.

This starry revival of All My Sons, directed by Evo van Hove, arrived in the West End with force and without an interval. It’s intense, stripped back, and quietly devastating.

At the centre is Brian Cranston as Joe Keller. A self-made businessman. A family man. A provider. During the war he authorised the sale of defective aircraft parts. Planes crashed. Young men died. He insists he did it for his family.

That’s the knot at the heart of Arthur Miller’s writing. When does providing become self-justifying? When does loyalty turn into denial?

Cranston is best known to many for television, Malcolm in the Middle and, of course, Breaking Bad. But he is also a formidable stage actor. I’ve seen him on Broadway in All the Way as Lyndon B. Johnson, and at the National Theatre in Network. He commands a stage with ease. Here, he’s controlled, charming, and quietly terrifying.

The production avoids the traditional American back porch. Instead, van Hove gives us a stark, stylised setting. He’s known for bold use of video and unconventional staging, but here he holds back. The austerity works. It makes the language do the heavy lifting.

The play runs just over two hours with no interval. It’s unusual for a three-act structure. The curtain falls briefly between acts, but Miller’s tragedy doesn’t offer the relief of a break here. It simply keeps tightening the screw.

The final moments divide opinion. I won’t spoil them, but they didn’t produce the wave of tears one might expect. A few nervous giggles rippled through the auditorium instead. Even so, the emotional weight of the story remains undeniable.

This is not dusty mid-century drama. Its themes, corporate responsibility, profit over safety, moral evasion, feel uncomfortably current. It moves like Greek tragedy. You sense the fall coming. You just can’t stop it.

The production has closed at Wyndham’s Theatre in London, but the good news is that it has been filmed for NT Live and will be in cinemas in April. I missed Cranston’s on-stage son during the performance I attended, as he was filming elsewhere, but Zane Wyatt stepped in impressively.

I will be revisiting it to compare Paapa Essiedu’s performance. In lots of ways, I think this production will be suited to a cinema presentation with close-ups, allowing the actors to more subtly demonstrate the emotions involved. Also, the interval-less aspect is going to be less irritating in a cinema.

This is a powerful, intelligent revival. Not perfect. But gripping, relevant, and anchored by a commanding central performance.

A stylised and austere staging from Evo van Hove strips the play to its moral core. Brian Cranston delivers a controlled, commanding Joe Keller in a production that resonates strongly with today’s corporate headlines. The lack of interval heightens the tension, even if the ending divides opinion.

See it on screen this April and follow EyeOnLondon for more theatre coverage and cultural insight.

[Image Credit | Jan Versweyveld]

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