There are three excellent reasons to see Michael Rudman’s revival of Arthur Miller’s postwar play about guilt, responsibility and the consequences of greed. One is simply that it is a rollicking good story about family secrets, the unintended consequences of actions and how, in trying to look after our own, we can destroy them and ourselves. The others are the very fine performances from Penny Downie and Alex Waldmann as the mother and son locked in a desperate dance to avoid the truth.
Waldmann plays Chris, a war veteran who has joined the family business after his father’s partner, Steve, was jailed for supplying defective aeroplane parts that led to the deaths of 21 airmen. His father, Joe, was exonerated by the court. Downie plays Kate, who cannot accept that her elder son, Larry, who has been missing in action for three years, is dead. But is Kate side-stepping an even nastier truth? Downie hauntingly suggests the madness that takes hold when you are living a lie, and Waldmann is subtle and complex, as Chris discovers that principles come with a price tag.
There is good support from David Horovitch as the blustering Joe, and Edward Harrison as Steve’s son George, corroded by bitterness and impotent regret. But too many of the performances, like Rudman’s production as a whole, are serviceable rather than exciting. It leaves Michael Taylor’s design to do a lot of the work with its clapboard and picket fence Eden, over which the sunlight hardens and the shadows lengthen.
•At the Rose, Kingston, until 19 November. Box office: 020-8174 0090.
