“Crime and Punishment”
(Note: this review is followed by the entry on All My Sons from my Encyclopedia of the New York Stage,
1940-1950. It includes a plot summary.)
The third Broadway revival (after those of 1987
and 2008)
of Arthur Miller’s 1947 All My Sons,
directed by Jack O’Brien for the Roundabout Theatre Company, is moderately
effective, with strong histrionics from its three leads, but never fully rises
to the occasion. Miller’s play resonates with contemporary relevance (think capitalistic
excess, faulty airplane issues, and “exoneration”) but, at least in this
version, seems more dated, wordy, and melodramatically contrived than ever.
For those unfamiliar with it, All My Sons takes place in 1947 in small-town Ohio, and is not at
all concerned with racial issues. Its tale of the corruption of the American
dream by capitalist greed focuses on the Keller family, Joe (Tracy Letts, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?), who
owns a manufacturing plant; his wife, Kate (Annette Bening, Coastal Disturbances); and their son,
Chris (Benjamin Walker, American Psycho). Another son, Larry, was killed during World War
II.
Much of the plot concerns the relationship between the Kellers and the
Deevers. Steve Deever, Joe’s partner, took the rap for the defective airplane
parts produced by his and Joe’s company, which led to the deaths of 21 men.
Ann Deever (Francesca Carpanini), the late Larry’s
girlfriend, comes from New York to the Keller home at the invitation of Chris,
who wants to marry her. Kate, obsessed with the idea that Larry
might still be alive, is adamantly opposed to the idea. Later, Ann’s brother,
George (Hampton Fluker), arrives, seeking to castigate Joe for his responsibility
in the crime that sent his father, Steve, to prison. (Additional plot details
are below.)
Gregory Mosher, the revival’s first director, wanted to cast
African-American actors in the roles of Ann and George Deever, a nod to Broadway’s
increasingly frequent practice of colorblind casting. Miller’s daughter, Rebecca,
in charge of the family estate, refused, stating, “I wanted to be sure the
concept held water historically and thematically," adding that such
casting “was in danger of white-washing the racism of 1947 suburban Ohio.”
Mosher quit, O’Brien was hired, and, in a twist even weirder
than Mosher’s plan, an African-American actress, Chinasa Ogbuagu, was hired to
play Sue Bayliss, wife of the Kellers’ neighbor, Dr. Jim Bayliss (Michael
Hayden). Moreover, the white Ann’s brother, George, was cast with the
African-American Fluker (just nominated for a Drama Desk Award as Best Supporting Actor in a Play).
This production has gone mega in its attention to realistic detail, with period-authentic costumes, down to the women’s seamed stockings, by Jane Greenwood and an ultrarealistic outdoor setting by Doug Schmidt (beautifully lit by Natasha Katz) showing the rear of the Kellers’ home, its backyard, and the back of an adjoining house. It’s the kind of set you may find yourself inspecting for telltale hints of artificiality, like the material used to create the grass lawn. In other words, its visual foundation is illusionistic, seeking, like a movie, to be as close to reality as possible.
So, regardless of where you are on the racial spectrum, and
what you may think of colorblind casting, you can’t be blind to Sue’s race when
she enters. When you should be attending to the dialogue, you are instead spinning
rationales for why everyone takes for granted that a black woman is married to
a white doctor in suburban Ohio in 1947. Sue’s role is small so you soon ignore
it. However, you’re going to be taken even further aback when George, whose
role is much more substantial, enters. 
This is too big an issue, with too many qualifications, to
elaborate on here, but my own position is that colorblind casting must be used
within reason and not when it becomes a distraction that steals focus from what
you should be watching and breaks whatever illusion a play is striving for. With
a few exceptions (Denzel Washington in The
Iceman Cometh, perhaps), what generally works in classic dramas and
musicals doesn’t so easily pass inspection in straight plays set in particular,
racially sensitive times and places.
There’s still much power in Miller’s dialogue, especially
when Bening, Letts, and Walker pull all the stops out in the third act. The emotional
storm and stress reaches hurricane levels but, because the situations seem so
carefully manufactured, including the last-minute revelations in a letter Ann produces, it fails to truly break your heart.
Bening brings striking, almost neurotic intensity to her maternal refusal to accept that her son is dead. Letts offers a range of emotional expressiveness, from avuncular pal to guilt-ridden malefactor. And Walker’s acting palette allows him to be believably shy, romantic, idealistic, and volcanically angry.
Bening brings striking, almost neurotic intensity to her maternal refusal to accept that her son is dead. Letts offers a range of emotional expressiveness, from avuncular pal to guilt-ridden malefactor. And Walker’s acting palette allows him to be believably shy, romantic, idealistic, and volcanically angry.
None of the other cast members is more than satisfactory,
including Carpanini, whose performance as Ann lacks both variety and depth. This
partly explains why, when a clearly moved reviewer asked as we left the theatre, “Didn’t that take your breath away?” I had to
answer, “Not so much.”
American
Airlines Theatre
227
W. 42nd St., NYC
Through
June 23
OTHER
VIEWPOINTS:
The
following is an edited essay on the original 1947 production of All My Sons from my Encyclopedia of the New York Stage,
1940-1950.
All My Sons Author: Arthur Miller;
Director: Elia Kazan; Sets/Lighting: Mordecai Gorelik; Costumes: Paul Morrison;
Producer: Harold Clurman, Elia Kazan, and Walter Fried i/a/w Herbert H. Harris;
Theatre: Coronet Theatre; opening, January 29, 1947; performances: 328.
This bombshell of a thesis drama represented Arthur Miller’s
first success. He was immediately heralded as a great white hope of the
American theatre by some, while others had serious reservations. It was
selected as the best American play of the season by the Drama Critics Circle
and was one of Burns Mantle’s Ten Best. Miller was inspired to write his play
when learned during the war of the true story of a war profiteer’s daughter who,
despite her love for her father, had exposed him and then left home. Its original
title had been The Sign of the Archer.
Set in the backyard of the Keller home in a small, Ohio town
and transpiring on a single Sunday, it pictures the Keller family of Joe (Ed
Begley), son Chris (Arthur Kennedy), and mother Kate (Beth Merrill). Larry,
another son, has died in the war, although Kate finds this hard to accept and
keeps believing that he is alive. Chris, a former army captain now in business
with Joe, is in love with Larry’s bereaved fiancée, Ann Deever (Lois Wheeler),
but Kate opposes the match.
It soon develops that Joe may have escaped imprisonment for
the manufacture and sale to the air force of defective airplane cylinders, a
crime that led to the deaths of 21 flyers. Joe’s betrayed partner, Steve—Ann’s
father—took the rap for the deed and went to jail. When the truth—revealed in
Larry’s last letter to Ann—comes out, Joe claims not only that he had placed
loyalty to his family—for whom he had to provide a living—ahead of patriotism
but that he was driven by the profit motive.
The idealistic Chris—previously convinced of Joe’s innocence—confronts
him in horror at the revelation. Joe discovers that Larry, racked by guilt when
he learned of his father’s complicity, killed himself. Joe realizes that “in
sinning against other men’s sons, he has sinned against his own,” as Euphemia Van
Rensselaer Wyatt put it in Catholic World,
and deals with his moral irresponsibility by shooting himself.
Some believed that the Ibsenesque play’s dialogue was biting
and authentic, its characters sharply individualized, its structure
dramaturgically sound and lifelike, and its theme of vast significance. Brooks
Atkinson of the Times hailed the new
arrival, saying that Miller “brings something fresh and exciting into the
drama. . . . It is a pitiless analysis of character that gathers momentum all
evening and explodes with both logic and dramatic impact.” “It has an urgency,”
wrote Rosamund Gilder in Theatre Arts
Monthly, “an originality that augurs well for [Miller’s] future . . . for he
sets authentic characters in a situation that is sharply individual yet broad
and vitally important in its implications. To Ward Morehouse of the New York Sun, the complexly plotted play
was “occasionally . . . fitful and spasmodic,” but when dealing with its
central issue had “extraordinary poignancy and power.”
But George Jean Nathan, in the New York Journal American, was unimpressed, believing the theme
familiar and the treatment equally conventional. “It seems to me to be just
another in the line of exhibits which misses out because it says what we
already all too well know in a manner we already know as well, and in terms and
language that are undistinguished.” Howard Barnes in the Herald Tribune reported that Miller “has an acute feeling for
theater and a certain sense of form, but he has not blended them in a
satisfactory drama.” He felt the characters were more like puppets than self-motivated
personages and that much of the action was contrived.
The production itself was lauded by most for its pulsing direction
and vividly intelligent and emotional acting, especially that of Merrill,
Begley, and Kennedy. Expert work also came from Karl Malden (as George Deever),
John McGovern, Peggy Meredith, and Eugene Steiner.
According to Kazan’s Elia
Kazan: A Life, coproducer Clurman himself had wanted to direct the play and
was very upset when Miller chose Kazan. This led to what Kazan called abominable
behavior by Clurman at rehearsals. “His discipline . . . was that of a naughty
child.” Clurman would sit with a secretary, presumably giving notes, but
laughing and talking loud enough for others to hear, or would be dallying
sexually with another woman at his side. In these and other ways he made his
presence unbearable for Kazan.
Clurman also kept insisting to Kazan that the character of
Mrs. Keller be made responsible for part of Keller’s guilt, although Kazan
resisted these suggestions. Kazan said Miller was influenced by them and tried rewriting
the part, only to give up the attempt. However, in Timebends, Miller’s autobiography, the playwright disclosed his
belief that Mrs. Keller definitely shares her husband’s guilt.
That year was the first for the Tony Awards, and Kazan won as
best director.
