This revival of Arthur Miller's great 1947 play could not be more timely. The story of a successful businessman, whose relentless and successful pursuit of the American dream leaves him blinkered from the effects of his actions on the rest of the world, resonates deeply with the current global divide over a war with Iraq. What a shame, then, that the stiltedness of Joe Dowling's production for the Abbey makes the play feel more like a period melodrama than a modern tragedy.
Dowling, a former Abbey artistic director who now runs the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis, directed All My Sons there last year, and the Abbey has imported Guthrie set designer John Lee Beatty and actors Peter Michael Goetz and Helen Carey to reprise the leading roles of factory owner Joe Keller and his wife Kate.
The remainder of the cast, all Irish, still feel tentative in their roles and their accents; Beatty's massive set of skewed clapboard houses looming over a garden ends up dominating proceedings.
The plot revolves around a batch of cracked cylinder heads, shipped out by Keller's factory during the second world war, that contributed to the deaths of 21 American soldiers. Keller's business partner, Herbert Deever, remains in prison for covering up the faults. Keller was exonerated of the crime.
The Kellers' son Larry disappeared in the war, but his mother Kate's belief that he will come home prevents her from supporting the blossoming romance between her surviving son, Chris, and Larry's girlfriend Ann, the daughter of Keller's imprisoned partner. The action spans one day as Chris's proposal of marriage to Ann prompts a series of revelations exposing Joe's guilt and triggering his suicide.
Goetz comes across as genial and slightly stubborn, but not the tragic hero struggling with his belief that the world ends "at the building line". Carey is eerily good as Kate, her habitual grin feeling more and more false as her world unravels. But the highly cerebral Declan Conlon does not convince as Chris.
The production only really gels in the 15 minutes that the excellent Darragh Kelly, as Deever's indignant son George, is on stage. The staging, with lots of long, loping strides across the garden, feels like an attempt to fill the space rather than the actions of real people moving around familiar surroundings. One suspects this production will improve dramatically in the coming weeks; at the moment it is gravely undercooked.
· Until March 29. Box office: 00 353 1-878 7222.
