Revivals of Arthur Miller plays are anticipated with a certain resignation by regular theatre-goers and critics. On opening nights we plod to the theatre in the full knowledge that our wayward moral compasses are about to be realigned. And we dutifully sit down knowing that what we are about to receive will be good for us. We sometimes forget that the lesson - in this case that we are responsible for society as well as ourselves - is almost always enshrined in a work of monumental power.
In this, Miller's first successful play which premiered in New York in 1947, David Suchet makes an always welcome return to the stage as Joe Keller, a manufacturer who knowingly supplied faulty engines to his country's armed forces during the war. Keller is Miller's version of a real-life story he was told about a man who sold faulty machinery to the army.
Twenty-one airmen died as a result of the shipment. Each of them could have been Keller's pilot son who has been missing in action for three years and whose probable death, his mother Kate - superbly played by Zoë Wanamaker with a light and tragic touch - refuses to accept.
The play is set in the backyard of the Keller's home that is swathed - in William Dudley's design - by the verdant green of a giant willow.
This wholesome all-American family (though Suchet has said he believes Keller's origins to be Jewish) suppresses its grief in loving and teasing banter. What brings it to the surface is the impending marriage of the Keller's surviving son Chris (Stephen Campbell Moore) to the missing son's fiancé, Ann (Jemima Rooper). She is the daughter of Joe's business partner who still languishes in jail for the crime Joe committed. And heading like a torpedo towards this veneer of idyllic America, is Ann's brother with a newly minted belief in his father's innocence and Joe's guilt.
Howard Davies's production leaves little time to consider the carefully constructed intricacies of the plot. The evening builds inexorably from a scene in which a father proudly pats his son on the back, to one in which the son raises his fists in shame and rage against his father.
By then, the lesson has been delivered, and we leave a little chastened by Miller's rightful claim to be the greatest playwright since that war. (www.apollo-theatre.co.uk)