‘All My Sons’ at the Modern delves into family pain

In the years following the Great Depression and World War II, America went about rebuilding and reinventing itself. The Kellers, the family at the center of Arthur Miller’s 1947 play “All My Sons,” are trying to do the same.

The Tony Award-winning domestic drama, which opens at the Modern Theater Coeur d’Alene on Friday, was Miller’s first major hit. In its dissection of family dynamics and its examination of the nature of guilt and failure, it feels almost like a dry run for Miller’s landmark work “Death of a Salesman.”

“Arthur Miller had such a way of truly understanding the subtleties of relationships,” said the show’s director, Jadd Davis. “If you step back from it, it’s easy to say there are good guys and bad guys, heroes and villains. But he paints them in such a way so you see them as people who made decisions in circumstances that were bigger than they could comprehend.”

Like the tragic Lohman family of “Salesman,” the Kellers are barely holding themselves together, stung by the loss of their son Larry, who went missing during the war. His mother, Kate (Tamara Schupman), believes he’s still alive, but his father, Joe (Kim Berg), isn’t as hopeful. Larry’s brother Chris (Billy Hultquist) was also in the war, and he’s now set to marry Larry’s former girlfriend, Ann (Aubrey Shimek Davis).

“From an appearance standpoint, it looks like they’ve got everything figured out,” Davis said. “It looks like, ostensibly, the American dream realized. But the truth of the matter is there’s a whole lot of gray area there.”

That gray area involves Ann’s father, a former colleague of Joe’s who is serving time in prison. And it turns out that the scandal that landed him behind bars also involved Joe, who was exonerated. As past trespasses are unearthed, we discover truths about the Kellers that they would prefer to have stayed buried.

“It’s hard to talk about the plot in detail without giving away spoilers,” Davis said. “It almost unfolds like a mystery in terms of its structure.”

The post-war setting is integral to the impact of “All My Sons,” but it’s not confining: Davis says contemporary audiences will still be able to connect and identify with the dramatic complexities of Miller’s story.

“It’s super relevant right now, particularly in terms of how money can justify our decisions,” Davis said. “We have the option of being honorable or the option of being practical, and it’s important that we see when we’re making those choices and that we’re able to identify the difference. … It meditates on morality, the ethics of what it means to be a good person in relation to honor, money and love and loyalty.”

The play’s second act is emotionally draining, but Davis, who also is the artistic director of Coeur d’Alene Summer Theatre, said his actors are more than up for the challenge.

“It’s one of the best casts I’ve ever had the privilege of working with,” Davis said. “We leave every single night in tears. That’s the nature of the show and the nature of the cast. They’re willing to take that journey and delve into the really difficult truths of the play.”