Babe Ruth and baseball. John D. Rockefeller and capitalism. Arthur Miller and the American Dream. These names and subjects are
often considered synonymous in discussions of our country’s cultural identity.
Some people might find it surprising that a playwright and a baseball player could be mentioned in the same defining way. But anyone who paid attention in high school English class knows Miller is as American as apple pie—though the stinging honesty of his words is often much harder to swallow.
Miller’s Pulitzer Prize-winning classic Death of a Salesman tends to steal the spotlight in the classroom. However, it’s his earlier—and, frankly, more dynamic—play All My Sons that takes the stage this month at PCPA’s intimate Severson Theater.
Set in the 1940s, Sons tells the heart-wrenching story of a family, a neighborhood, and a country torn apart by war and the moral ambiguities that come with it.
Even before the lights go up, the audience is transported to an idyllic suburban backyard, complete with a white picket trellis, chirping songbirds, and an apple tree. But one immediately gets the sense that all is not well in this household. A windstorm has snapped the young apple tree in half. It lies, splintered on the lawn, like a soldier fallen in battle.
As neighbors Joe Keller (a game Peter S. Hadres) and Jim Bayliss (Mark Booher) discuss the unfortunate tree, we learn it was planted three years ago as a memorial for the Kellers’ oldest son, Larry, a fighter pilot who is missing in action.
[image-2]
Joe is afraid the dead tree will upset his wife, Kate (played to heartbreaking perfection by Kitty Balay), who swears their son is still alive. Joe considers getting rid of the tree before Kate wakes up, but it turns out she’s already seen it. Joe’s younger son, Chris (Quinn Mattfield), says he saw his mother standing in the yard when the tree fell at 4 a.m.
“She’s dreaming about him again,” hisses Joe, clearly frustrated by his wife’s unwillingness to accept Larry’s death and move on like everyone else. And it seems everyone else has moved on: Joe’s business is thriving; Chris has returned from the war and acclimated to everyday life, and he’s even getting ready to propose marriage. The object of his matrimonial affections, however, is none other than his dead brother’s childhood sweetheart, Ann (Nicole Widtfeldt).
“If you marry this girl, you’re pronouncing him dead,” Joe warns. But Chris is tired of being the dutiful son and brother. He wants a wife and family, and knows Ann is the girl for him—despite the emotional baggage that might come with her.
And, like any good family drama, there’s plenty of baggage in Sons: Not only is Ann “Larry’s girl,” she’s also the daughter of Joe’s business partner, who is currently rotting in jail for shipping out dozens of faulty engine parts to American troops overseas—faulty parts that caused 21 pilots to fall to their deaths.
[image-3]
Both Ann and Chris want desperately to overcome their pasts. Ann has forsaken her father as a cold-hearted murderer, and Chris, who commanded a unit in the war, is haunted by the sacrificial deaths of his men.
“There was no meaning here,” Chris tells Ann about his reaction to life back in the states. “Nobody was changed at all. It felt wrong to be alive.”
Everything he’s inherited because of Larry’s death—the money, the business, and even Ann herself—“feels like loot, and there’s blood on it.”
Meanwhile, Ann is so lonely, so hungry for a family and sense of belonging, that she’s willing to accept Chris as a replacement for his brother.
This couple is struggling with the effects of World War II, but anyone in the audience who has lived through war—Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan—can identify with them. We all know someone who has experienced that grief and frustration, or maybe we’ve experience it ourselves.
Mattfield and Widtfeldt seem a little stiff in their beginning scenes together, but perhaps it’s intended to augment the taboo nature of their budding romance and impending marriage.
The first act belongs largely to Balay, whose frazzled, long-suffering Kate brings a much-needed sense of urgency to the stage. Balay makes audience members want to hug away Kate’s pain and slap some sense into her at the same time.
As the first act draws to a close, we learn that Ann’s brother, George, has just visited their father in prison. The trip has sent him into a rage, and he’s coming straight over to confront Joe and to bring Ann home.
“The boy’s smart now. He’s a lawyer,” Kate says of George as she and Joe sit alone in the yard. The felled apple tree lies just a few feet away, an ominous sign of what’s been and what’s to come.
[image-4]
All of the artistic components of the play—specifically the ingenious sound design by Irwin Appel, and the spot-on costume and scenic design by Tracy Ward and Stephen Henson—are presented in the first act, but it isn’t until the second act that the pieces fully come together. When they finally do connect, it’s pure theater magic. Suddenly, the audience isn’t sitting in a theater anymore; they’re in the Kellers’ beautiful backyard, watching a family quickly unravel before their eyes.
Part murder mystery, part Greek tragedy, All My Sons masterfully depicts the effect lies and greed can have on a family, a community, and a country. Miller deftly argues that real battles are fought not in a war zone but on the home front, where peace and prosperity can make us lazy and cruel.
As Chris says in a pivotal scene in Act Two, “This is the land of great big dogs. You don’t love a man here; you eat him. This is a great big zoo.”
The beauty of All My Sons is that, rather than creating detestable caricatures, Miller instills in each of his characters a humanizing quality, a dignity and honesty that makes hearing the truth bearable.
Managing Editor Amy Asman doesn’t have any sons. Contact her at aasman@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Mar 15-22, 2012.