Theater Review: Powerhouse action in Miller's 'All My Sons' Theater Review: Powerhouse action in Miller's 'All My Sons' (March 17, 2004)

By Bryan Wiggin
Almanac Theater Critic

Arthur Miller became famous for prosaic plays, plays containing hardly a line of dialogue that might not have been overheard in actual speech.

But his plays, though dressed in everyday clothes, address issues of ethics and morality, and it is the seriousness of those issues that gives his plays their value.

Miller also is a theatrical craftsman who gives his actors substantial work to do, in roles that require them to use their acting muscles. The TheatreWorks production of Miller's "All My Sons" delivers magnificently in both the exploration of the moral issues it addresses and in the splendid acting that puts suffering flesh and blood on those philosophical bones.

The time is August 1947, and the location is the backyard of Joe Keller's house, somewhere in the Midwest. As designed by Andrea Bechert, it's a modest place in a middle-class neighborhood -- a covered back porch, a screen door that bangs when it closes, a couple of lawn chairs. It's ordinary.

And, as acted by Will Marchetti, Joe seems pretty ordinary, too. Indeed, Marchetti's acting is so effortless and natural that he seems hardly to be acting, at all. But Joe is a man with a stain.

During the war, his company manufactured airplane engines. One batch came out with cracked cylinder heads. They should have been scrapped, but instead were sent on to the air force, and 21 American pilots crashed and died as a result.

Joe and his partner were both tried, but only his partner was sent to prison.

Joe's elder son, Larry, was reported missing in action three years ago, but Joe's wife, Kate, insists that he will return. Meanwhile, the younger son, Chris, has invited the partner's daughter, Ann, who has moved to New York, to visit, because he wants to marry. Ann wants this, too, but Kate insists that Ann, in her heart, knows that Larry is still alive and that she must wait for him.

Ann's brother, George, has just visited their father in prison, where both siblings had previously abandoned him, and he angrily accuses Joe of being the real culprit in the engine crime and of having been clever enough to make his partner take the fall.

The final scene is one of anguish, as Joe and Kate, Chris and Ann, flay each other with accusations of guilt, ingratitude, and betrayal. With all four acting full tilt, it is a powerful performance and a searing experience.

Early in the play, it seemed that Jeffrey Cannata, as Chris, was, like Will Marchetti, barely acting, at all. And Carla Spindt, as Kate, seemed also to be casually walking into the play. But as the play developed, and the drama intensified, so did their acting. And with Cassie Beck as Ann, all four delivered acting that was wrenchingly, painfully true. Magnificent work.

I don't know whether director Kent Nicholson has squeezed these performances out of his actors, or simply guided what they gave him, but he shapes the play superbly, increasing tension to the shattering denouement. Bravo.

In smaller parts, except for the caged fury of Geno Carvalho as George, the actors -- Colin Thomson, John Nahigian, Marie Shell, Danielle Levin, and Andrew Sanford -- fit comfortably and believably into their roles as friends and neighbors.

The audience was engrossed throughout the performance, and properly so. For this production of "All My Sons" has acting that's the real thing.

Don't miss it.

INFORMATION

"All My Sons,"
by Arthur Miller, is being presented by TheatreWorks
at the Lucie Stern Theatre in Palo Alto through March 28.
For information, call 903- 6000 or go to theatreworks.org.

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