Photo:Maria Vartanova
If you're looking for a lift from the post-Christmas blues, Arthur Miller's
All My Sons is not your ticket.
However, if you're looking for a truthful, emotionally harrowing play about
families, responsibility and just how adept we humans are at deceiving
ourselves about ourselves, OLT's production of Miller's 1947 play is what
you want.
Opening night jitters blunted the early going, but the ensemble rode that
problem out to yield a solid take on Miller's story about a patriarch Joe
(Mike Kennedy) whose dedication to capitalism destroys the lives of World
War II fighter pilots when he knowingly manufactures faulty aircraft parts.
That financially-driven action eventually rends his own family and, of
course, Joe himself.
Director Joan Sullivan Eady should have reined in Krysta Matthews who plays
a flirtatious neighbour to ditzy excess. And Eady should also have noticed
that there's not a strand of grey to be seen, at least not from our seats in
row F, in the hair of George (Danny McLeod), a lawyer whose greying locks
Joe's wife Kate (Cheryl Jackson) makes much of.
Despite such annoying tics, Eady leads a strong cast - including Patrick
McIntyre who shines in the second act as Joe's son Chris - through a moving
and credible portrait of a family and a post-war America in moral crisis.
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