Damn that was powerful: All My Sons from the National Theater (UK)

My wife and I went to see a filmed performance of the stage play All My Sons performed at the National Theater in the UK.

This is the second performance we've seen in this arrangement, the last being Hamlet a few weeks ago.

This theater uses physically unsettling casting. In Hamlet the actress playing Ophelia was probably a meter (three feet) tall, Francesca Mills and Hamlet by an actor of Sri Lankan origins, wearing a Blockbuster Sweatshirt for part of the play, Hiran Abeysekera, who transforms, for some scenes, Hamlet into a wise guy college kid. It's unsettling among the many versions of Hamlet I've seen, but somehow powerfully interesting, removing the Dane from England and into the greater world beyond.

As for All My Sons - Arthur Miller's play about which I knew nothing at all - the family of the war contractor was interracial.

Well, I broke down in tears a few times. These were great actors and actresses, and the play, the play, the play, was brilliant, weighing integrity against money, timeless in a very real sense.

It was an afternoon well spent, an afternoon being human.