Arthur Miller’s 1980 meditation on the Great Depression and its impact upon one New York family (based on his own) didn’t enjoy much success until he partially rewrote it and peppered it with music of the 1930s. I can see that some leavening might be felt necessary, but I’m unconvinced that many of these interludes add anything except running time... and, with late starts, three hours plus of economic hardship can be a bit of a slog, even when presented in a form subtitled “A Vaudeville”.

Director Rachel Chavkin, though, finds a communitarian feel to the proceedings not dissimilar from her approach to Hadestown at the National Theatre recently, and moreover in keeping with a period when Americans had to hang together in order to keep America itself together. She (I presume; it’s not a very Millerian device) splits mother, father and son in the Baum family each into a trio; in most scenes, one performer will take the burden of the acting, with the others providing an intangible kind of support, and on the occasions when matters are treated chorically, there is a touch of classical power. Musical director Jim Henson (really) and his own trio of associates provide most of the music, although two or three times recordings are played of discreetly sampled and looped period numbers such as “We’re In The Money”.

Surprisingly, such a tactic doesn’t jar; I felt more disrupted by a line such as “This is a corporate country now”, which seemed to me more 1980 than 1932. Of course, it is even more 2019, which is the point of staging the play today; when narrator-figure Arthur Robertson pronounces at the end that he cannot imagine America allowing another such economic collapse to happen, the rueful audience laughter is as good as formally cued.

Clarke Peters is well cast as Robertson, skilled at commanding an audience, even one virtually on all sides as here, with some of us seated upstage of the large, seldom-stationary revolve which serves as the main acting area. The trinitarian approach makes it a little difficult to nominate standout individuals, but the Baum family actors include Golda Rosheuvel and Clare Burt as mother Rose, James Garnon as father Moe and Paul Bentall (and no-one else) as Grandpa.

On the play’s première, it was felt in some quarters that the individual and national stories, rather than enlightening each other, ended up almost cancelling each other out in terms of impact. I disagree; perhaps screen dramas in recent decades have familiarised us with a strategy that marries big-picture portrayal with case study, but it feels entirely unforced. For me, it is the music which threatens to trivialise matters, although occasionally it underlines a point, as when the president of General Electric’s account of his early days is presented as a tap-dance routine, effectively putting on a show for the executives. All in all, though, The American Clock joins The Price to provide impressive West End presentation of Miller’s less seminal work.

Written for the Financial Times.