March 12, 2004

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Palo Alto Online

All our fathers

by Ben Marks

There's been much made of the theme of personal responsibility that runs through Arthur Miller's 1947 play, "All My Sons," and rightfully so.

Miller's story centers on aircraft-parts manufacturer Joe Keller (Will Marchetti), who knowingly ships faulty cylinder heads to the Army, causing the deaths of 21 U.S. pilots in World War II. Even worse (could anything be worse?), he lets his partner take the fall for him.

Keller is a poster child for the shirking of personal responsibility. When we meet him, he's relaxing in an Adirondack chair, reading the Sunday paper and reaping the rewards of a booming post-war economy. By the end of this Mid-western drama, there is only one moral conclusion the audience can reasonably reach about him.

All of which may explain why I was more intrigued by Miller's near-perfect depiction of this highly imperfect man than I was by the details of his all-too-obvious crime, which seems simplistic in our era of shadowy offshore shell companies and gasoline price gouging in Baghdad.

Indeed, just about every character in the play captivated me, so much so that I became impatient when Miller's actors were made to dance too precisely to the tune of his play's ultimately predictable plot. I get Miller's point: Tell me more about these deliciously rich characters.

From the moment we meet Joe Keller, for example, we can't help but notice how hard he works to project an air of easy affability to his neighbors. He's even fake with his own family. Thanks to Marchetti's spot-on portrayal, we are immediately suspicious of the rapport between Keller and a neighborhood kid named Bert (Andrew Sanford). Keller has the impressionable lad convinced that he's got a jail hidden in his basement, but the fib really serves to alert us to Keller's emotional immaturity, as well as being a flag to anyone who's ever heard of Freud that "Jail in my basement" is probably shorthand for "I've got a secret."

Marchetti's Keller is not all smiles, winks and glad hands; he can fulminate and roar with the best of them. To make the most of this trait, Miller has Keller deliver the play's requisite red herring when he protests -- a bit too vociferously -- that his dead son Larry never flew in one of the planes that was fitted with his company's defective parts, so he can hardly be blamed for his son's death.

Of course no one has blamed Keller for such a thing, but the outburst accomplishes Miller's goal of diverting the audience's attention from the simpler truth that Keller is undoubtedly lying about his culpability in the tragedy.

Miller draws Kate Keller (Carla Spindt) with similar attention to detail. Unlike her husband, who's well practiced at putting unpleasant aspects of his past behind him, Kate is haunted by the belief that her son Larry is still alive, even though he's been unaccounted for more than three years.

Miller gives Kate many of the play's best lines, and Spindt's ferocious irrationality is riveting, but poor Kate is typical of the way women were portrayed post-World War II. Her unfailing devotion to her clearly dead child is depicted as some sort of mental illness, and the way the family tiptoes around her neuroses is reminiscent of the scene in Alfred Hitchcock's "The Man Who Knew Too Much," when Jimmy Stewart drugs his wife into semi-consciousness before giving her the bad news that their child has been kidnapped. It's hard to imagine a Miller of today making a Kate of today such a victim, but Spindt makes up for the stereotyping by imbuing her portrayal with steel.

Ann Deever (Cassie Beck), who plays Larry's "girl," also gets some choice lines of dialogue, which Beck delivers with sly, occasionally sexy, sweetness. Now here's a character you don't see every day -- a young woman who's so devoted to the family that put her father (Keller's business partner) behind bars that she's prepared to marry the brother of her dead true love. Got that?

Given the jumble of emotions that must be coursing through the poor woman's nervous system, it's hard to understand why director Kent Nicholson seemed content to have Beck's Ann stand at attention so much, as if her pumps were nailed to the stage. Given her heart's desires, and the secrets we suspect she harbors, the director might have permitted her to fidget a bit.

No such restraints were imposed on Ann's brother, George (Geno Carvalho). When Carvalho steps out onto the stage to deliver a message to his sister from the jailed father they have both virtually disowned, the temperature in the house jumps several degrees, as if Sean Penn himself had walked into the theater with an open bottle of Jack Daniels in one hand and a loaded handgun in the other. At first the combustible Carvalho seems ready to explode. Then, before our eyes, he morphs into a sweet, adult version of the little boy next door he used to be, sipping a cool glass of grape juice that dear Kate has made just for him. Don't blink, though, because seconds later he's all grown up and dangerous again, a man who's suddenly remembered why he's here.

Keller's surviving son, Chris (Jeffrey Cannata), is perhaps the play's most problematic figure. Cannata does his best to play the good son without also appearing as the clueless son (maybe it was plausible in 1947 that he could have been in the dark for so long about his father's guilt, but it doesn't ring true today). Cannata is in fine control of this difficult character early on, but he goes from earnestness to outrage too quickly -- the actor should save a few of his most apoplectic sneers for when he really needs them. Still, Cannata does a good job of personifying one of the other great themes of the play -- namely, that even though fathers will always forgive their sons for being mortal, sons rarely repay the compliment.

What: "All My Sons," by Arthur Miller, presented by TheatreWorks

Where: Lucie Stern Theatre, 1305 Middlefield Road in Palo Alto

When: Through March 28. Regular show times are Tuesday, March 16 at 7:30 p.m.; Wednesdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m.; additional Saturday performances (March 13, 20) at 2 p.m.; Sundays at 2 p.m.; additional Sunday performance (March 14) at 7 p.m.

Cost: Tickets are $20-$48; discounts available for youth, students, seniors, and members.

Info: For tickets and information, please call (650) 903-6000 or visit theatreworks.org.
before Larry went MIA

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