Family skewed

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 27/05/2023 (1150 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Inside every house, there is enough domestic drama to fill a three-act play. Most families keep their travails and traumas locked away, doing their best to silence their explosions, dab at the stains of turmoil, and pretend nothing happened in the first place.

Not the Kellers.

The central family of Arthur Miller’s All My Sons airs its dirtiest laundry in the backyard.

Set in the era immediately following the Second World War, All My Sons was for Miller a transformative exploration of a new brand of national post-traumatic denial. Upon its première in 1947, it marked the beginning of a confrontational era in American entertainment, defined by robust cynicism and simmering anger over what had been lost at home, even with the greatest battle supposedly won way over there.

In a brilliant and stunningly acted revival of Miller’s epic second full-length play, independent company the 28th Minute sets the audience at the Rachel Browne Theatre amid the war’s still-reverberating aftershocks. Nearly 80 years after Miller wrote it, the finished product still rings true.

As the show begins, the gentle melody of Cole Porter’s You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To washes over the Kellers’ arbour. It’s the first and, thankfully, only time director George Toles allows nostalgia to enter the picture.

With a storm just passed and the paint on his modest house still streaked by the moisture, Joe Keller (played with subtle menace and undeniable gravity by Darcy Fehr) sits on a caned chair, reading the newspaper. On the front page is an above-the-fold image of the mushroom cloud of an atomic bomb.

But Joe, who made his hay during the war manufacturing munitions, doesn’t read the paper for the news anymore, he tells his bumbling neighbour, Frank (Jesse Bergen). At 61 years old, a late-blooming businessman, Joe is more interested in the want ads.

Meanwhile, his son Chris (a remarkable Justin Fry) reads the books section, despite seldom reading a book. “I like to keep abreast of my ignorance,” he says.

Joe’s wife Kate (a fierce, tightly wound Heather Roberts) reads between the lines for mention of her son, Larry, who went missing during a flight mission over three years ago. Despite all evidence to the contrary, Kate believes her boy will return.

Hey, we all read the newspaper for different reasons.

Even with Larry MIA, his presence looms: shortly after his disappearance, the Kellers planted a lone sapling as a memorial. It’s a direct and effective metaphor: when the storm arrives, the trunk snaps, mangling even further a family tree already torn to bits by the gears of war and profiteering.

While the action takes place in the Kellers’ yard, their former neighbours, the Deevers, drive much of it. Daughter Ann (a bubbling, boiling Hayley Stacey) was set to marry Larry, and now intends to share her life with Chris; it’s anyone’s guess what her brother George (Kevin Ramberran, perfectly unbalanced and erratic) will say or do next.

Their parents are elsewhere. The Deever mother is in hiding, driven out of town by the shame of her husband’s imprisonment.

Steve Deever is serving time for his part in sending off faulty cylinder heads, resulting in the deaths of 21 pilots during the war; it’s a fatal error for which his business partner, Joe, evaded penalty.

While Miller’s script is structured with taut pacing that refuses to relent, that alone is not enough to guarantee a solid production. The realization of this show’s artistic vision is virtually complete. What makes it even more impressive is that a performance of this calibre was produced on a relative shoestring, with cast members doing much of the behind-the-scenes work.

Aside from playing George, Ramberran designed the sound, the show’s poster, and produced All My Sons with Toles. Roberts co-ordinated the sharp costumes; Stacey and Stephen Sim, who delivers whimsy and wisdom as neighbour Dr. Jim Bayliss, handled publicity. Jonalyn Basconcillo fills three roles as set designer, stage manager and prop co-ordinator.

Much can be learned by observing the actors in the background, who never disengage from the action in front of them. This is particularly true of Stacey’s Ann Deever, who often is forced to listen in on uncomfortable conversations disparaging her own family and questioning her own loyalty. Even if the audience is focused on Fehr, Fry or Roberts, there, in the background, Stacey’s eyes dart, her breathing intensifies, and her character’s future flashes before her eyes.

All My Sons is ultimately a show about fissure, and the existence of two worlds on either side of here and now. While written in the aftermath of a war, and focused on the guilt of survival and the shame implicit in the pursuit of wartime profit, it remains relevant as we continue to rebuild our communities in the wake of an ongoing pandemic.

In 1947, Miller asked audiences to consider how they could possibly move on from such loss, grief and absence of grace.

In 2023, there’s still no sign of a consensus answer.

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com