Timothy Mark Davis and Michael Gioia come to a crisis moment in New City Players’ All My Sons (Photos by Ryan Arnst)
By Bill Hirschman
Most actors and directors are skilled at depicting the optimistic warmth of bonded family gatherings, or they are skilled at explosions of pessimistic rage and sorrow, or sometimes even both.
What New City Players’ ensemble achieves in its dynamic production of Arthur Miller’s classic All My Sons is making totally believable the slow descent from one to the other.
Many other productions of dramas slip gears bouncing from one emotional state to the other. But here the tragedy is underscored by watching a middle-class family recognizable as our neighbors or ourselves disintegrate before our eyes.
Directed by Jason Peck, the audience can sense a stygian shadow creeping inch by inch into the idealistic bliss created by Miller and a stellar cast.
Even more disturbing in our troubled times is not simply that the Kellers extended family harbor a secret, but that it is rooted in the evasion or pure abandonment of taking responsibility for our actions or inactions. A web of lies infects hope for the future.
The 1947 play is revived from time to time. Palm Beach Dramaworks produced it when they opened their new space at the Cuillo Theatre in 2011 and the play is taught in theater and literature classes. So if you know the secret in advance, it’s intriguing seeing how Miller lightly drops in hints early on that something is amiss in this buoyant vision of the American Dream.
The story centers on the Keller family in small-town middle America during the summer of 1947. Patriarch Joe Keller (Michael Gioia) runs a machinery manufacturing plant he built. Son and likely the next partner Chris Keller (Timothy Mark Davis) has been home after active bloody years in World War II.
His brother Larry, a pilot, has been missing in action for three years. This night, a windstorm has blown down an apple tree planted back then as a memorial for some and a symbol of hope for others.
While Joe and Chris believe that Larry is dead, matriarch Kate Keller (Laura Turnbull) doggedly still believes that Larry is alive and one day will return to his hopeful mother.
Ann Deever (Caroline Tarantolo), Larry’s sweetheart before the war, has arrived back at the Keller home from New York City. Chris has invited her because he wants to marry her, even though he knows his mother will have a hard time with the prospect of Chris marrying “Larry’s girl” as she puts it.
Kate categorically rejects the often-raised prospect that Larry is dead, even though it has frozen the family moving forward, — including Chris’ hope of getting engaged. He tells his mother, “We’re like at a railroad station waiting for a train that never comes.”
But there is something else that bonds the Keller and Deever families together, a crime connected to selling knowingly shoddy defective parts for fighter planes. Twenty-one fighter pilots died because of the flaw. Ann’s father and Joe were both accused, but only Ann’s father is paying the price in prison. Joe was exonerated and released from jail. But many in the community believed Joe was directly involved in the fraud.
Joe has perfected dealing with those suspicions: “I ignore what I gotta ignore.”
When Ann’s brother George (Brandon Campbell) arrives at the Keller home after visiting his father in prison, the tension boils to the surface, placing the Keller family on the brink of destruction.
Watching it all is the friendly Dr. Jim Bayless (Carlos Alayeo) and colder wife Sue (Laura Argo) who bought the Deever home next door, and the Lubeys (Juan Gamero and Kristi Rose Mills.)
Eventually, guilt hidden for years explodes, resulting in an emotional meltdown. But that’s not the end of the play; the aftermath continues as rationalizations, compromises and excuses duel with the truth. And there’s one more secret to crush everybody and everything.
At one point, Chris unloads to his father and to us, “You can be better! Once and for all, you can know there’s a universe of people outside and you’re responsible to it, and unless you know that, you threw away your son.”
Laura Turnbull
The cast includes some of New City’s individual stock players. Gioia, who has elevated shows in smaller companies here for years, inhabits Joe’s pride in the world he has built and his love for his family. Yet, Gioia subtly alerts you that there’s something inside keeping him antsy. As the anxiety builds and builds, Gioia depicts someone who has almost convinced himself that his rationalizations are the truth. But not quite.
Watch him recalling with pride suffusing his face how he walked boldly through the neighborhood immediately after getting out of prison, people calling him names and accusing him of murder.
Just as fine, Turnbull turns in yet another of her multi-layered performances, notable here for her warm exterior covering a cold steely refusal to believe that Larry is dead.
Davis has the toughest job turning in a credible transformation of the positive young man with a future who discovers that the American Dream may be built on shaky morals. He is trying to reconcile how this world hasn’t seem to have changed after the horrors he saw in the war. But Davis nails every bit of it from his seemingly unquenchable quiet joy to a tailspin that ends with his breakdown.
The rest of the cast provides solid support, especially Caroline Tarantolo as Ann trying to deal with Kate’s opposition to her marrying Chris, plus her own secret. A nod also to the Desmond Sacks as a child in the neighborhood.
Michael McClain has masterfully created the Keller home on the narrow, shallow stage. The front porch surrounded by trellises and foliage exudes the solidity and comfort of the post-war world returning to normal. Normally this is done as an expansive two-story home but the intimacy here heightens the impact of emotions.
The other production designers shine: Annabel Herrera’s lighting, Cassy Sacco’s costumes, Jameelah Bailey’s props, Tyler Johnson Grimes’ sound and projection design, which likely produced the ‘50s video and radio ads that set the mood before the opening.
Just as in Miller’s Death of a Salesman written a year later, people who live or have lived in the shroud of illusions, eventually pay a price.
As the company dramaturg Ali Tallman wrote in a short essay in the program, “Their American Dream, built on selective accountability and willful blindness, exposes the corrosive bargain at the heart of any ideology that conflates success with moral worth.”
Side note: It has been a pleasure watching the evolution of New City Players as it developed over the past decade, co-founded by Producing Artistic Director Davis. Praise is due its battle to produce memorable productions while fighting trying to stay solvent. It has succeeded year after year in everything from classic titles to wry satirical comedies. It deserves the time and ticket buying support as it continues to grow.
All My Sons from New City Players runs through March 9 at Island City Stage, 2304 N. Dixie Highway, Wilton Manors, (south of Oakland Park Blvd.) Performances at 8 p.m. Thurs-Sat.; 3 p.m. Saturday-Sunday. Running time 2 hours 15 minutes including one intermission Tickets are generally $40. Call 954-376-6114, or visit https://newcityplayers.org/allmysons. Sunday shows are followed by a talkback with the cast. Friday and Saturday shows are followed by a Weekend Wine Down – a casual time of reflection and libations.
Timothy Mark Davis proposes to Caroline Tarantolo
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