All My Sons

Reviewed by Holly Bartges

What a way to open the season for the Denver Center Theatre Company.

Rachel Fowler as Ann Deever and Mike Hartman as Joe Keller in the Denver Center Theatre Company’s season opening production of All My Sons. Photo by Terry Shapiro

WWII is over. It’s the late 1940s. Joe Keller lounges in the backyard of his comfortable home. A backyard that has obviously been given a great deal of attention with its roses, and carefully laid out stonework. Only this morning, the roses droop, petals and leaves strewn about. A small tree, broken in half, lies where it fell. Joe reads the paper. A neighbor, Frank Lubey wanders by “working off his breakfast.”

A serene, pleasant scene. Mike Hartman gives Joe the look and feel of someone who lives at the top of his world, sense of humor in tact, and respected in his neighborhood, His yard is the place where the neighbors congregate. He’s king of his castle. He’s successful, has command and control of his family, or so he thinks. Harman fills in all of these spaces about Joe with his stance, his voice, and the tilt of his head. Hartman even gives Joe a Robert Duvall attitude with the twist of his mouth spelling out confident assurance in his place in the universe. Frank a budding astrologer, filled with gnawing curiosity, notices the result of the high winds from the night before. Played honestly and openly by Steven Cole Hughes, Frank asks about the news. With a slice of humor, Joe tells him he finds more information in the classifieds than in the actual news. Frank focuses on the tree.

All My Sons was first produced on Broadway in 1947 claiming vital critical acclaim-winning the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award. It was Arthur Miller’s first successful play. Miller placed all his hopes of becoming a playwright on this one play. He worked on it until he was satisfied with every line. If this one didn’t fly, he was hanging up his playwriting aspirations. Fortunately, it flew high wide and handsome, as Miller went on to become one of America’s all-time great playwrights. His Death of A Salesman remains a hallmark of American Theatre.

Miller found a way to dig underneath the skin of American society engaging his characters in conversation, even today, most want to avoid, or don’t believe in. He knows when to strike with confrontation, when to hide secrets, and when to light the fire of social issues. He does it all with down to earth characters who wear the issues as easily as Kate Keller wears a kitchen apron. Joe’s wife, played with complex tones written in every worried wrinkle of her face by Jeanne Paulsen. In the very beginning one can’t help but wonder if this dear woman who lost a son, Larry, in the war, and planted a tree in the backyard in his honor, balances on the edge of insanity. Larry is coming home. She knows it, defying anyone and everyone who disagrees. Joe worries over how she will react when she sees the tree destroyed.

Directed by Bruce K. Sevy, The Denver Center Production Company’s production of All My Sons has a gangbusters, knock out cast. Sevy’s directorial footprints are stamped square in the midst of this show. He has assembled a highly talented cast that bring characters so much to life, you feel you know them. They lived next door to you once upon a time ago.

Bill Forrester’s set design with its hometown feel leaves us feeling as though we lived there. That’s our house or the house next door. Charles MacLeod’s lighting design fills in the cracks of emotion spilling out onto the set. Matthew C. Swartz’ sound design completes the pictured experience shutting out what is real to us. All that is real is Joe Keller’s isolated world.

Chris Keller idolizes his father. At age 32, he clings to his idealism; a strong sense of justice, believing with heart and soul his father is innocent. David Furr wears the mantle of Chris with direct aplomb. Joe’s neighbor and partner were convicted of delivering defective plane cylinder heads causing the death of several pilots. Joe was acquitted; his partner sent to prison. Therein lies the secret that unravels throughout the play, unraveling the lives of everyone involved.

Chris has a problem. He is in love with Ann Deever, Joe’s partner’s daughter, who was Larry’s girl. Chris invites her from New York for the weekend. Since Kate cannot let go of Larry, soundly believing, even after three years, he will return, she is horrified that Chris would even think of wanting to marry Ann.

Played with delicious political righteousness, the right smile, the right dress, the right kindness, the right gentleness Ann wins the hearts of everyone involved. Rachael Fowler wears the skirts of Ann with likable fun walking on eggshells. Kate has to believe Larry is coming back. If she concedes he is dead, she has a truth to face she cannot bear.

Leslie O’Carroll takes neighbor Sue Bayless for a roller coaster ride. Not one to mince words, Sue knows the truth. O’Carroll grabs her by the throat thrusting her into the limelight. She is devilishly delightful, even though she makes everyone shudder in his or her boots.

When George, Ann’s brother, hears she is planning on marrying Chris, he storms into town with angry determination and fight in his eyes. David Ivers gives him such believable fiendish fire, one either thinks he is mad as a hatter, or knows a truth no one is willing to accept, everyone but Joe and Chris.

James Michael Reilly plays Dr. Jim Keller, a competent doctor who has learned to live under Sue’s command. Quietly convinced of Joe’s guilt, he likes Joe, and sees the Kellers as the center of the neighborhood. In his placid demeanor, Reilly aptly conveys the quiet intensity swelling within Jim.

The cast is completed with Eileen Little playing Frank’s somewhat helter skelter wife, Lydia, and Sam Van Wetter playing Bert, a neighborhood boy who thrives on Joe’s jail games.

Each character is delivered in complex painted tones. Each character adds another dimension to the issues swirling in this somewhat isolated backyard. Knowing Miller as we do, knowing Sevy’s defining directional touch, it is little wonder this production of All My Sons speaks as loudly today as it did in 1947. Its perception drives to the very core of human nature, truth, honor, integrity and how those values are treated. It is a play that needs to be witnessed. It is a play that needs to be experienced. It is an experience that needs to be savored.