This being the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Liverpool Playhouse begins its autumn programme ankle-deep in apples. They're everywhere - in the foyer, in bowls at the bar and all over Gideon Davey's set, where a rush of windfalls reminds us that not everything is as rosy as it first appears.
We tend to think of Arthur Miller as a naturalistic playwright, but director Gemma Bodinetz draws particular attention to the motif of the broken apple tree in the Kellers' front yard. Planted to commemorate the younger son, a pilot missing in action during the second world war, the shattered sapling comes to stand for the fragility of the family's illusions.
Miller stated that "evasion is the most developed technique most men have"; and All My Sons is a play in which every character turns a blind eye to something. The mother, Kate, believes her son will miraculously return; Chris, the eldest, has never questioned where the Keller affluence came from; while his father Joe is the most culpable self deceiver of all, a man "with a talent for ignoring things" who authorised the sale of faulty parts during the war.
Miller's debt to Ibsen is often acknowledged, yet Bodinetz's production has a distinctly Chekhovian feel, enhanced by the autumnal trappings and unhurried way in which the characters inhabit this suburban complacency.
The performances are uniformly excellent: Michael Byrne appears frailer, and consequently more pitiable than most Joe Kellers; Dearbhla Molloy's anxious Kate embodies every mother's darkest fears. Alexis Denisof's Chris suggests that the ubiquitous apples may ultimately signify loss of innocence, though by the end of the evening there seems little doubt that they are probably all rotten to the core.
· Until October 7. Box office: 0151-709 4776.
