A Note from the Dramaturg by Ali Tallman
Dramaturg of New City Players’ production of All My Sons, Ali Tallman, addressing the preview show audience.
Arthur Miller (1915–2005)
A member of the pantheon of Great American Playwrights, Arthur Miller was born to Jewish-Polish immigrants in New York City in 1915. His father, like Chris’s, ran a successful factory and was a community pillar. But, the Millers’ success came before the stock market crash of 1929 and, when it crashed, they lost everything. A young teen, Miller had a front row seat to his father’s conquest and absolute loss of the American Dream. The intersection of this fall from greatness with the hardships of the Great Depression profoundly shaped his worldview.
WWII further molded him. He was writing for the Federal Theatre Project, a New Deal initiative when he was denied enlistment by an old injury. In lieu of serving, he travelled to interview soldiers in Army hospitals and camps, adapting their stories into patriotic radio plays to amplify their experiences and stir the public conscience.
After his Broadway debut failure, Miller vowed to write one final play, and if it too failed, he would leave the theatre. He spent two and a half years writing All My Sons – ten times longer than he’d spent on previous plays. He drew inspiration from Ibsen’s The Wild Duck and a real wartime scandal between a father and daughter. Premiering to acclaim, All My Sons established his signature blend of social critique and psychological depth centered around the common man, foreshadowing masterpieces like Death of a Salesman and The Crucible. Today, the play endures as a haunting reminder of the cost of denial and moral compromise — and the courage required to confront truth.
On Theme
All My Sons unfolds in the shadow of not just World War II, but the American Dream – a siren song of prosperity, security, and contentment. More than a family’s tragic downfall, it’s an indictment of the systems shielding some from consequence while demanding everything of others. The Kellers’ tragedy is rooted not in universal human frailty, but the specific privileges that insulate them – their whiteness, their money, their social carte blanche to shape truth. Their American Dream, built on selective accountability and willful blindness, exposes the corrosive bargain at the heart of any ideology that conflates success with moral worth. Miller’s warning is clear: a society that clings to hierarchies of worth is a society already in collapse.
This play starkly reminds us that truth has always been contested terrain. In 1947, as now, facts are malleable in the hands of those with power and often empathy remains conditional – a privilege for those within our orbit. The Kellers’ narratives reflect a society that clings to comforting fictions rather than confront uncomfortable realities. And as their illusions crumble, Miller argues that empathy shouldn’t require personal stakes. To only care when tragedy touches your porch, is a moral failure.
Laura Turnbull as Kate Keller (left) and Michael Gioia (right) in New City Players’ production of Arthur Miller’s All My Sons.
Within the play’s devastation lies a fragile seed of hope. Miller questions: What might a horizontal morality rooted in collective care – rather than blood, tribe, or transactional loyalty – look like? Such a world remains just out of reach in the play, but its potential haunts every scene.
As we grapple in a “post-truth” era with resurgent authoritarianism, the erosion of communal bonds, and an unprecedented rate of aviation disasters, All My Sons challenges us to reject the stories we’re sold that equate survival with domination. To see through the myths that excuse violence, to recognize that comfort built on others’ suffering is not stability but a ticking bomb. What world might we build if we finally, recklessly, chose to see all our sons? The curtain falls on ruin, but also on clarity—a warning that our survival, now as then, depends not on whose dreams we prioritize, but on refusing to dream alone.
Excerpt from “Tragedy and the Common Man” by Arthur Miller
“There is a misconception of tragedy with which I have been struck in review after review, and in many conversations with writers and readers alike. It is the idea that tragedy is of necessity allied to pessimism. Even the dictionary says nothing more about the word than that it means a story with a sad or unhappy ending. This impression is so firmly fixed that I almost hesitate to claim that in truth tragedy implies more optimism in its author than does comedy, and that its final result ought to be the reinforcement of the onlooker's brightest opinions of the human animal.
For, if it is true to say that in essence the tragic hero is intent upon claiming his whole due as a personality, and if this struggle must be total and without reservation, then it automatically demonstrates the indestructible will of man to achieve his humanity.
Laura Turnbull as Kate Keller (left) and Brandon Campbell as George Deever (right) in New City Players’ production of Arthur Miller’s All My Sons.
The possibility of victory must be there in tragedy. Where pathos rules, where pathos is finally derived, a character has fought a battle he could not possibly have won. The pathetic is achieved when the protagonist is, by virtue of his witlessness, his insensitivity, or the very air he gives off, incapable of grappling with a much superior force.
Pathos truly is the mode for the pessimist. But tragedy requires a nicer balance between what is possible and what is impossible. And it is curious, although edifying, that the plays we revere, century after century, are the tragedies. In them, and in them alone, lies the belief-optimistic, if you will, in the perfectibility of man.
It is time, I think, that we who are without kings, took up this bright thread of our history and followed it to the only place it can possibly lead in our time-the heart and spirit of the average man.”
ALL MY SONS by Arthur Miller
Directed by Jason Peck
Set in the aftermath of World War II, the play centers around the Keller family and their dramatic dance between truth, lies, guilt, responsibility, and the consequences of pursuing the American Dream at any cost. Considered a masterwork in the American theatrical canon, All My Sons has been revived countless times across the globe since its original Broadway production in 1947.
WHEN
February 21–March 9, 2025
PRICE
$40-$45 Tickets
$5-$25 Pay What You Want Preview on Feb. 21st
Make sure to plan your visit after booking tickets!