The Plymouth Plantation in Massachusetts is a historical theme park where you can watch actors pretending to be the Pilgrim Fathers as they garden, wash and debate the ideal of liberty in the new world. Great as Arthur Miller's contribution to 20th-century drama has been, you wonder if productions of his plays are becoming a bit like this.
Dispirited by previous failures, Miller thought that All My Sons would be the last play he would ever write. In certain respects it was, as it firmly established the terrain of Millerland - an eternal 1940s suburb of white clapboard houses where you watch real-life actors grappling with their capitalist neuroses.
All the familiar traits are here: small-time big shots with filthy consciences, open-hearted good guys getting their idealism squashed, stoic women standing by looking drawn and defeated. Miller himself said that he intended the play to land on stage "like a boulder that had fallen from the sky", which brings to mind Dorothy's cottage from the Wizard of Oz plummeting out of Kansas and squishing the evil witch.
Ten years ago York Theatre Royal put on All My Sons, and it is significant that this production is exactly the same. There is no room for imaginative leeway in Arthur Miller's plays. They are meticulously tooled, flat-packed dramas that you pull out of the box and assemble the same way every time. Assuming you follow the instructions, it is difficult to produce a bad All My Sons, but even harder to come up with a great one. Director Damian Cruden at least puts all the bolts in the right places and his effort stands up sturdily.
The acting is fine. Barry Stanton cuts a bullish, immutable figure as Joe Keller, the military-parts manufacturer with an incriminating blind eye to quality control. Jane Wymark's hollow-eyed performance certainly feels like the product of having been married to him for 40 years. There's nothing to fault with the production, either - the sense of period is precise, the details impressive. But it raises the question whether staging Miller is a creative enterprise. Is it enough to go on curating his living museum?
· Until November 23. Box office: 01904 623568.
