All My Sons

'' His drama is a piece of expert dramatic construction. Mr. Miller has woven his characters into a tangle of plot that springs naturally out of the circumstances of life today. '' NEW YORK TIMES Three years on from the disappearance of his son, successful businessman Joe Keller has made a comfortable life for his family in America''s Midwest: despite being accused of supplying defective aircraft equipment in World War 2, he is altogether happy. But, when a shadowy figure from Joe''s past returns, his hidden truths are revealed, and the price of the American Dream is laid bare.Miller''s first successful play on Broadway, All My Sons launched his career and established him as one of America''s greatest dramatists, also winning him the 1946 Tony Award for Best Author. An incisive indictment of greed, capitalism and self-interest, All My Sons is remembered as one of the playwright''s greatest works.This Methuen Drama Student Edition is edited by Clare Gleitman, with commentary and notes that explore the play''s production history (including excerpts from an interview with director Jeremy Herrin) as well as the dramatic, thematic and academic debates that surround it.>

Préface
Miller's first successful play on Broadway, All My Sons exposes the awful price paid by self-interest and greed fostered by capitalism. This Methuen Drama Student Edition features commentary and notes by Claire Gleitman.

Auteur
Arthur Miller was born in New York City in 1915. After graduating from the University of Michigan, he began work with the Federal Theatre Project. His first Broadway hit was All My Sons, closely followed by Death of a Salesman, The Crucible and A View from the Bridge. His other writing includes Focus, a novel; The Misfits, first published as a short story, then as a cinema novel; In Russia, In the Country, Chinese Encounters (all in collaboration with his wife, photographer Inge Morath) and 'Salesman' in Beijing, non-fiction; and his autobiography, Timebends, published in 1987. Among his other plays are: Incident At Vichy, The Creation of the World and Other Business, The American Clock, The Last Yankee, and Resurrection Blues. His novella, Plain Girl, was published in 1995 and his second collection of short stories, Presence, in 2007. He died in February 2005 aged eighty-nine. Susan Abbotson is Professor of English at Rhode Island College, where she mostly teaches drama. She is the author of Student Companion to Arthur Miller (2000) and A Critical Companion to Arthur Miller (2007) and numerous articles on Arthur Miller and other modern and contemporary playwrights. Past President of the Arthur Miller Society, she now manages their website and FaceBook page, and is the Performance Editor for the Arthur Miller Journal. She also authored Thematic Guide to Modern Drama (2003), Masterpieces of Twentieth Century American Drama (2005), and Modern American Drama: Playwriting in the 1950s (2019). She has published articles on Sam Shepard, Tom Stoppard, Mae West, Tennessee Williams, Thornton Wilder, August Wilson, Eugene O'Neill, Lillian Hellman, and Paula Vogel in a variety of books and journals.Claire Gleitman is Professor of Dramatic Literature and Dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences at Ithaca College, USA. She is the author of Anxious Masculinity in the Drama of Arthur Miller and Beyond: Salesmen, Sluggers, and Big Daddies (Bloomsbury, 2022). She has also published articles on Arthur Miller, Bertolt Brecht, Tennessee Williams, Brian Friel and Tony Kushner, among others, which have appeared in such journals as Comparative Drama, Eire/Ireland, Modern Drama and the Arthur Miller Journal. At Ithaca College, she is also the director and co-founder of the On the Verge play-reading series and former coordinator of Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies.

Contenu
CHRONOLOGY COMMENTARY Historical, social and cultural contexts Genre and themes Play as performance Production history Academic debate Behind the scenes Further study PLAY TEXT NOTES