Received with almost universal acclaim by the critics, and now booking to October 2, the superb revival of Arthur Miller’s All My Sons, starring David Suchet and Zoë Wanamaker, is a theatrical event that should on no account be missed.

Suchet and Wanamaker (pictured) are both actors of a type that is becoming less common in the profession, being well-known for excellent work on television while maintaining a taste and tremendous talent for live performance.

Here, under director Howard Davies, they deliver near-faultless portrayals of sad individuals whose lives are ruined by an unwillingness to face up to unpalatable truths.

Miller’s first major success, All My Sons has a firm place in what may be termed the ‘family misery’ tradition of US drama, established by Eugene O’Neill and consolidated in the plays of Tennessee Williams.

It focuses on 61-year-old engineering boss Joe Keller (Suchet), outwardly a picture of domestic contentment as he joshes with neighbours in the garden of his sprawling house (brilliantly presented in William Dudley’s designs) on the outskirts of an American town in the late 1940s.

In truth, he is a man with much on his mind, unable to accept culpability for his firm’s decision to ship out defective aircraft parts whose failure led to the death of 21 US airmen. His assertion that his right-hand-man was responsible convinced a jury to acquit him over the matter.

His wife Kate (Wanamaker), meanwhile, continues to insist that their pilot son Larry — who went missing in action three years earlier — is still alive. She blackmails others to go along with the fantasy by threatening that if Larry is dead, she will kill herself. The dreadful possibility exists that he may have been another victim of the engineering failure.

Matters come to a head during the emotionally fraught 24 hours in which the play is set, through the presence of Larry’s former fiancée Ann Deever (Jemima Rooper), whom the Kellers’ other son, Chris, wishes to make his bride. To compound problems, she is the daughter of the man jailed in the parts affair.

Chris, played with great skill by Stephen Campbell Moore, has a pivotal part in the action. Always convinced of his father’s innocence — or, at any rate, having pushed to the back of his mind any thought that he might be guilty — he now has to face up to the ghastly possibility that he could be mistaken.

Tickets: 0844 412 4659.