Cast members of “All My Sons;” Photo by Benjamin Rose.

Presented by Lyric Stage of Boston
By Arthur Miller
Directed by Scott Edmiston
Compositions by Oleg Smirnov

Sep 23 – Oct 18, 2026
Lyric Stage
140 Clarendon Street
2nd Floor
Boston MA 02116

Critique by Kitty Drexel

TLDR: The Lyric’s production of All My Sons is sad, is triumphant. This family needs therapy. 

BOSTON — Arthur Miller’s All My Sons forces its male characters to face the consequences of their unscrupulous actions as businessmen, patriarchs, and neighbors. As they do, their female counterparts, their wives, sisters and mothers, perform the emotional and other invisible labor necessary to clean up the figurative and literal messes their men have made. This play contains themes such as survivor’s guilt, profit over principles, and the disillusionment of one white nuclear family’s American Dream after WWII, among others. The Lyric Stage’s production, directed by Scott Edmiston, runs in Boston through October 18. 

Each character of All my Sons intertwines with the next. Over three acts, we learn how the cast of characters are intentionally and unintentionally woven into each other’s half truths, secrets, and lies. It begins with self-made businessman Joe Keller (Bill Mootos) and neighborhood scion, a man who prides himself on building a manufacturing business for his nuclear family with his wife Kate (Laurie Marie Duncan) in Ohio. Their first son, Larry, was a pilot who went MIA during the war. Their second son, Chris (Mark Souza), survived as a decorated soldier and works in Joe’s factory. Years later, Joe, Katie and Chris still wrestle with Larry’s disappearance. 

Just before the show begins, a midnight storm has decimated Larry’s memorial tree planted in the Keller backyard. We watch the playfully intelligent Keller family contemplate the tree’s remains from Janie E Howland’s quaint, Norman Rockwellian set design the next morning. Then, Annie Deever (Josephine Moshiri Elwood, who plays her joy with sincere innocence and sadness with crushing angst), Larry’s now grown, high school sweetheart, enters. She’s visiting the Keller family from New York and hopes that Chris will give her a reason to stay in Ohio. But she has reason to believe that not every family member would welcome her staying. 

While Annie is reacquainting herself with the Keller’s, her brother George (Quinton Kappel) is visiting their father, Steve, across the state in a Columbus penitentiary. Steve and Joe were once business partners. A controversy involving a shipment of parts from their factory landed Steve and Joe in jail; Joe was acquitted; Steve was not. George’s return to the Keller home sheds new light on the manufacturing controversy. By the end of the play, both the Kellers and the Deevers will learn new truths about the Keller family that will alter their relationships forever. Miller shows us once again that all of this could have been prevented with rigorous, destigmatized family therapy.  

Allison Beauregard, Cara Clough, Chris Heuisler, Julian Hirschfield, and Eric McGowan play the Kellers’ charismatic neighbors. 

The Lyric Stage and Director Edmiston deliver a triumph of a production. From its casting to the smallest design details, All My Sons delivers excellence to the Boston masses. At the center of this triumph are actors Elwood, Souza, and Duncan as the surviving Keller family members. Elwood and Souza battle each other for patriarchal dignity. They are two men struggling under the weight of society’s expectations of men while desperately searching for life’s meaning. Miller loves to watch his male protagonists suffer. Elwood and Souza suffer beautifully under the direction of Edmiston’s astute direction. 

Duncan as Kate is warm, graceful and utterly devastating. At once, Duncan is smart and thoughtful only for her to change tactics in the middle of a line to reveal Kate as a broken woman barely holding on to her sanity. Kate made her sons her entire personality. To reveal her vulnerabilities, to give into doubt about her family’s ethical purity is to accept that her family has faults. Her mind is a Jenga puzzle; if one block falters, her psyche will fall to pieces.  

Costume designer Chelsea Kerl slyly dresses her cast in clothing that spans the decades and slyly shows us the inner workings of the play’s characters. The men wear trousers that land on the natural waist. The women wear kicky dresses that rest at the shin and nylons with a seam up the back. Characters begin the play in bright, sunny blues, browns, greys and the occasional green. As the drama builds, so do their colors darken. By the end, with one striking exception being a cheerful, yellow sweater vest, pivotal characters wear navy and black to express the darkness of their minds. 

The costumes match the blues and yellows used in Karen Perlow’s lighting design: A blue spotlight shines on characters during dark, solitary moments; Yellow shines like the sun across the set during the moments when the characters are or are attempting happiness. The dominant color flows one color to another over three acts to indicate how well the characters are coping with unexpected revelations.   

The unity of this production’s design elements matches the unity of its actors and creates a cohesive production worth making time to see. All My Sons premiered on Broadway in 1947 at the Coronet Theatre. It was directed by Elia Kazan and ran for 328 performances. That’s not possible for our dear Lyric due to its season’s constraints. Our fingers are crossed that the Lyric’s production extends for as long as possible so many folks can see it. Cancel what you must and check out All My Sons before it closes. 

Can’t afford a ticket? Check out the Lyric Stage’s discounted ticket options: https://www.lyricstage.com/ticket-information/lyric-for-all/

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