TEHRAN- A reading performance of American writer Arthur Miller’s 1946 popular play “All My Sons” will be staged at the Neauphle-le-Chateau Theater in Tehran on October 31.

Negar Hosseini will direct the reading performance based on a Persian translation of the play by Hassan Maleki.

Javid Hashemi, Roya Rezai Mehdi Seyyedi, Nazanin Kouhestani, Sareh Asghari and Hadi Heshmati will perform the reading.

Miller wrote “All My Sons” after his first Broadway play, “The Man Who Had All the Luck”, closed after only four performances in 1944. Determined to prove himself as a successful playwright, Miller regarded his next work as a final attempt to establish his career, vowing to find another profession if it failed to attract an audience.

The play, which premiered at Broadway’s Coronet Theater on January 29, 1947, was inspired by a real industrial scandal reported in an Ohio newspaper. Miller’s then mother-in-law drew his attention to an account of the Wright Aeronautical Corporation, which had knowingly supplied defective aircraft engines to the US military between 1941 and 1943. The incident provided the basis for Miller’s exploration of corporate greed, moral responsibility and the human cost of prioritizing profit over lives. 

Set in the aftermath of World War II, “All My Sons” centers on Joe Keller, a prosperous businessman who runs a machine shop with his family’s future in mind. During the war, his company supplied defective aircraft parts, resulting in the deaths of 21 military pilots. Although his business partner, Steve Deever, was imprisoned for the crime, Keller was acquitted and subsequently rebuilt his business, accumulating considerable wealth.

Years later, Keller’s carefully maintained life begins to unravel when his surviving son, Chris, announces his intention to marry Ann Deever, Steve’s daughter. Ann was previously engaged to Chris’s brother, Larry, who disappeared while serving in the war and is presumed dead. Chris and Ann’s relationship brings the unresolved past back into the Keller household, particularly because Keller’s wife, Kate, refuses to accept that Larry will never return.

The situation becomes more complicated when Ann’s brother, George, returns from the war after visiting their imprisoned father. Discovering that Keller has remained free while Steve bears the consequences of their business dealings, George challenges the version of events that the Keller family has long accepted. His arrival threatens Chris and Ann’s plans and forces the family to confront the truth about the defective parts.

As tensions rise, Chris struggles to reconcile his admiration for his father with the possibility that Keller knowingly sacrificed the lives of other men’s sons to protect his business. The revelation of Larry’s final response to his father’s actions brings the conflict to its devastating conclusion, exposing the consequences of Keller’s moral failure for his own family.

The play received the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best Play in 1947, establishing Miller as a major voice in American theater. It also won the Tony Award for Best Author. 

“All My Sons” introduced themes that would remain central to Miller’s work, including the conflict between personal loyalty and social responsibility, the relationship between fathers and sons, and the ethical consequences of pursuing wealth at the expense of others. Through Keller’s downfall, Miller challenges the belief that success and family devotion can excuse wrongdoing, presenting a powerful tragedy about individual guilt and the wider obligations people have to society.

SAB/