All My Sons

by Arthur Miller
directed by Frank Condon

April 18 - May 17, 2009

Our third production of a play by master American playwright Arthur Miller (Death of a Salesman in 1996 and The American Clock: A Vaudeville in 2004).

Winner of the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best New American Play in 1947.

All My Sons deals with decisions that result in dire consequences, and the question, are we able to make moral choices? What happens when lies are exposed and the business/consumer aspect of contemporary society is laid bare?

Joe Keller and Steven Deever, partners in a machine shop during World War II, turned out defective airplane parts, causing the deaths of many men. Deever was sent to prison, while Keller escaped punishment and became a wealthy man. In this commanding work, a love affair between Keller’s son, Chris, and Ann Deever, Steven’s daughter; the bitterness of Steven’s son, George, who returns from the war to find his father in prison and his father’s partner free; and the reaction of a son to his father’s guilt escalate toward a climax of electrifying intensity.

All My Sons first introduced the themes that run through Miller’s work as a whole: the relationship between fathers and sons, and the conflict between business ethics and personal morality.

Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower, in 1961, warned us against the Military Industrial Complex.

“This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications ... we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”