Wednesday, January 17, 2007

All My Sons

I was grumbling to myself that the standard 300 words in The Guardian wasn't enough to sum up the Royal Lyceum's All My Sons. Then they phoned up and asked for an extra 50. Not a huge increase, but enough to say how good so many of the performances are. One thing I didn't have space for was the set. I can't quite decide if the realism of Michael Taylor's imposing design, living grass and all, is another case of big-set syndrome – the kind of thing that looks impressive but risks overwhelming the creative life of the play. It works well enough for Miller's back-yard naturalism and in the end I'll give it the benefit of the doubt, but film does this stuff so much better.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Saw this wonderful production on the 7th Feb. It was quite something, and I think was better than the Dundee Rep's version a few years ago now - which was also stunning.

The performances were great, but I did wonder if the dialogue was taken a click too fast on occasion.

I remember the Dundee production's slightly slower pace and use of silences to good effect.

In fact, several plays at the Lyceum have suffered by simply going too fast - the very worst case was Julius Caesar which was taken at breakneck speed.