‘Sons,’ lacking direction, feels too shallow
“All My Sons” was the young Arthur Miller’s first hit in 1947, yet his prodigious dramatic gifts were already on full display.
This play is fraught with nuance, depth and wrenching tragedy. This is an eye-opener for anyone interested in seeing the evolution of Miller’s moral and dramatic ideas, as well as for anyone interested in seeing a multilayered and emotionally riveting work of stage art.
This Spokane Civic Theatre production is by no means the definitive version. It’s too stiff, tentative and lacking in intensity – except for one riveting performance by Damon C. Mentzer.
Those who know Miller’s “Death of a Salesman,” which arrived two years later, will see many of the same themes explored in “All My Sons.”
The show opens on what appears to be an almost idyllic American backyard, lovingly designed by Peter Hardie. Everyone seems happy and cheerful – and then you notice the cracked tree, sprawled on the ground.
The rest of the play is about the ways in which the entire Keller family ends up cracked and sprawled on the ground.
Miller slowly doles out the story’s hints and clues, until the following plot takes shape:
Joe Keller (Wes Deitrick) is the owner of a machine shop. During the war, he manufactured airplane engine blocks. One batch turned out to be defective, resulting in 21 dead pilots. Keller was exonerated on appeal; his business partner took the fall.
On the day the play takes place, Joe’s son Chris (Mentzer) has invited Ann Deever (Kari Mueller) for the weekend with the intention of asking for her hand in marriage. The complication: Ann is the daughter of Joe’s jailed business partner – and Keller has been keeping a dirty secret involving that business partner.
Yet Miller was already a master of adding layer upon layer of complexity. So on top of this, it turns out that Ann was once engaged to Larry Keller, Chris’ brother.
Larry was a pilot who was reported missing three years earlier and never heard from again. Their mother, Kate Keller (Kathleen Malcolm), believes that Larry will miraculously come marching home. So she is not, to say the least, in favor of Chris marrying Ann.
What transpires is an American tragedy of nearly Greek proportions, touching on issues of family loyalty, moral responsibility and American greed.
Unfortunately, many of these themes are played with an emotional flatness by director Jessica McLaughlin Sety’s ensemble. In one scene, Ann is confronted by nosy neighbor Sue Bayless (Karla Morrison) with the most shocking rudeness – yet the actors play it as if they’re simply having a chat. Far too many scenes lack even a modest level of dramatic intensity – not to mention the complex emotional nuance demanded by Miller.
Mentzer, as Chris, provides the most glorious exception. Only in Mentzer’s performance do we see the complicated mix of emotions boiling under the surface. Mentzer is a coiled spring, wanting desperately to believe in his father, yet terrified that his belief is unjustified. Mentzer commands the stage, suffering a very visible kind of emotional whiplash with every new devastating development.
Deitrick also summons up some fire as the old man. At least Deitrick labored hard to create a whole-bodied character.
This is, unfortunately, what is lacking in the rest of the cast. Too many characters just stand there, expressionless, when other characters are speaking. There’s a telling dearth of reaction and body language, evidence of actors who are simply waiting to say their next lines.
I am not inclined to call out individual actors on this, because this stems from a lack of direction more than a lack of talent. I never got the feeling that the ensemble as a whole understood what they needed to do in each individual scene.
Yet Miller’s words remain so powerful and the play’s structure is so canny, I still felt some of this show’s impact. And I still came away enriched by seeing, finally, one of the milestones in Miller’s development and in American theater in general.