Fragmentation. That's what it's all about.
The thing about walking into a new production is that it comes upon you in stages. More and more theatres are forgoing the practice of drawing a grand drape across the stage, sealing the rapturous world therein until the designated time — and in a black box theatre like the Emrys Jones it is quite impossible. This means that as we shuffle to our seats we are able to cast our eyes on the set, vacant, gloomy, and a bit haunting, waiting to be peopled. And in a theatre this size, there is no way to conceal it from the neutral blaze of the house lights; it is laid bare without the benefit of atmosphere, for us to freely molest it with our eyes. As I think on it now, it is an unsettling thing for the set to be so naked and defenseless, but that is the world in which we live, so the set must be strong enough to withstand it.
All My Sons is a play of juxtapositions. This realisation washed over me as I was contemplating the set before the play began. The first image is that of a cozy backyard, paragon of domesticity from some idyllic yesteryear that we can only describe as after the Great Depression but before the first season of Mad Men. It is bright, cheerful, and serene, with the aft side of a house adorning the upstage wall, giving the impression of a warm and welcoming home within. However, as your vision pans backward, you can see the house lose definition around the edges. The walls don't just stop cleanly and extend into the imagination; they become jagged and uneven, sporting gaps and fissures, with the siding become more sparse as it extends outward until it eventually fades into oblivion. The tiles forming the garden pathway as well break away and recede into a twisted Rorschach shape. And one is left with the impression that one is looking at a deteriorating dream moments before waking. Like I said, fragmentation.
The play, Arthur Miller's first major success on stage, centres on the Keller family living in the aftermath of the Second World War. Joe is an aging tradesman who made a living during the war manufacturing airplane parts. His son Chris is a veteran with big dreams who feels somewhat constrained by his family. His other son, Larry, was a fighter pilot who went MIA during the war and is presumed dead by everyone except Joe's wife Kate, who holds vigil night after night waiting for her lost son to return. At the epicentre of the drama is a spindly tree, planted in Larry's honour, which is snapped in half by a strong wind at the play's opening. This act of God foreshadows the eventual fracturing of their suburban content, as Chris brings in Larry's old flame Ann, with the intention of making her his own wife, something he knows will devastate his mother. And indiscretions in Joe's past which at one point raised accusations of "murderer" will come back to haunt him, and his good-natured charm may not be enough to deflect them.
Contemporary critics regarded All My Sons "a very depressing play at a time of great optimism." I can understand the sentiment — after all, post-war America was buzzing with jingoistic fervour and everyone was looking forward to starting their families in a future that looked brighter than ever. Even those who lost loved ones could still take solace in nobility of their sacrifice. This sense of optimism is captured well in the opening scene, where Joe spends a quiet morning in the yard with neighbours in sweater-vests fluttering around, making the idle chatter of men whose lives have more or less plateaued. The only thing to offset their idyll is the little broken tree at the corner of the stage. The significance of that death ripples outward until soon everything we thought we knew about their situation is peeled away. The hopes and dreams of the characters are flayed, leaving bare their doubts and insecurities, until it becomes clear that there is no hope, even in this hopeful time.
For this reason, I think All My Sons is more apropos today than it was when it was first produced. It is a play that speaks to an age of uncertainty. We no longer take comfort in the justice of our wars, and as Kate Keller curses through the realms of God and Man for having her son taken from her, it is hard not to think of mothers we see every day, losing their children in increasingly senseless conflicts. And thoughts of the amoral corporate imperialism we see every day are stirred when we face the image of Joe placing business interests above the lives of the soldiers flying his planes. This is the world where the codes and beliefs with which people grew up have ceased to have any meaning, so all they can do is keep moving, without really knowing where or why.
Kashtin Moen is a bit of a surprise out of the department this fall. In his mainstage debut, he is adept at capturing the genteel charm of Joe Keller. He displays a very genuine warmth throughout most of the play, but he is also arresting in those moments when he cracks into pain and anger. When he says that all he did was for family, we really believe him. Chris Donlevy provides what you might call the moral centre of the play. As Chris, he is principally a reactionary character, acting as counterpoint to his father's restricted world-view and his mother's pathological denial. He commands a lot of the stage and takes on all the subtle shifts of the atmosphere in general. Jackie Block continues to grow from her Greystone debut last fall. As Ann, she plays a balancing act between homespun nice girl, blushing romantic, fearful sister, and anguished lover. She represents an emotional teeter-totter, bringing us up and down, from her painful memories to her defiant hope for a better future, eventually leading to a heart-rending emotional climax, carrying herself with fragile beauty the whole way. And Anna Seibel, already warm to the Greystone stage, offers another astonishing performance. She is a creature of many layers, and in Kate Keller we see a loving mother and devoted wife, veiling a rage against both Heaven and Earth for their dual roles in taking away her son. She is fearful and hopeful, tormented and brave; she is distant and vaguely mentally disturbed, often allowing her devotion to her dead son to override her devotion to her living son. Anna Seibel brings these things whirling together, bringing the audience to yearn with her, eventually sending them crashing down when she hits her emotional tipping point. Like I said, fragmentation.
The four principal actors are accompanied by a talented ensemble of supporting characters. Mike Prebble as Dr. Jim Bayliss has a natural charisma that allows him to command the attention of the audience. As his wife Sue, Jeanine Thrasher looks very Betty Draper with a fiery eye and an acid tongue. She is a bit of an enigma, full of passion and resentment wrapped up in a sexy swagger, and Thrasher makes a sharp impression in her time on stage. Jesse Gagnon brings in some much-needed comic relief with his scatter-brained Frank Lubey; he can elicit love and laughter with nothing more than a simple flailing of his ladder. Joanna Munholland is remarkably subdued as his wife Lydia, the quietly dignified housewife; in theory she is the most stable of the characters, but in her interaction with Ann she betrays a confusion of how this life became hers. Vernon Boldick as "neighbourhood boy" Bert can best be described as adorable, brimming with youth and vitality. Then Rohan Keenan as Ann's brother George only appears in one pivotal scene but packs it with a great emotional density. His sullen reserved anger gradually bubbles to the surface in a fiery confrontation with Joe.
In Pamela Haig Bartley's hands, this play unfolds as a very evenly paced character exploration, burning with emotional tension. It raises questions about what we believe and what drives us. There is a sense of profound ennui and crippling uncertainty reminiscent of last year's Three Sisters, with moral conflicts that hearken all the way back to Experiment with an Air Pump. When the play begins, there are certain assumptions made about what is right and wrong that will become shattered by curtain. The play is nihilistic in some ways, systematically breaking down all sense of purpose, but it ends secure in the knowledge that there is nowhere to go but forward, which brings it back to its earlier hopeful stage, albeit in a very twisted way.
As I look back, it seems to me there are hundreds of ways the production could have gone badly, given the philosophical and emotional depths being probed. But it succeeded thanks to the brilliant chemistry of its cast, which allowed for easier shifts in dynamic, which often happen drastically and rapidly. The cast is supported quite beautifully by Adam Naismith's expressionistic set design, breaking apart, caught in the middle of the vortex. The set is at once very tangible while remaining locked in the imagination, splitting apart just outside the characters' fields of vision. The actors — and set — interact in many different layers bouncing around divers emotions, often simultaneously, until the sense of unity they once had vanishes and we are left with fractured images seeking connection. The story is timeless: a universal tale of regret and fear, set after a period of great confusion (the war) and at the dawn of a period supposedly for happiness and reconstruction, but the truth is there can be no reconstruction because what once was can never be. Parts of the world we knew and the world we hope to have spiral down, but they can never be completely made whole.
Like I said, fragmentation.
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