By Michael McGregor
The Oregonian
September 14, 2009

When it premiered in 1947, while the country was still celebrating its victory in World War II, Arthur Miller's first hit play -- an Ibsen-like look at two families torn apart by wartime deeds and lies -- was an unsettling reminder that even a good war has its underside. War profiteering. Cowardice. The gross imbalance between frontline sacrifices and comfortable business-as-usual life at home.

Miller himself once called it "a play written for a prophetic theater."

Given the many ugly revelations and even grosser imbalances of America's latest wars, however, a revival today risks seeming less prophetic than quaint or stodgy. Which Artist Repertory Theatre's current take might be if it weren't so sure and heartfelt or if Miller's play weren't so devastatingly good, so universally challenging to how we Americans think and live that its candid moral questions feel freshly damning.

Set in the sunny backyard of an affluent manufacturer who escaped punishment for shipping faulty parts that caused the deaths of 21 pilots (while his partner took the fall), "All My Sons" explores the fault lines between fathers and sons, husbands and wives, and even neighbors and generations, exposing the costs -- to individuals and society -- of the tribal ties, desires and deceptions that bind us.

Artist Repertory Theatre director Jon Kretzu has assembled a strong cast capable of navigating the many power shifts among the family members and neighbors who float through Joe Keller's (Michael Fisher-Welsh) yard on a single August day in 1946. When the lights go up on Keller reading the newspaper at an outdoor table, it seems a typical summer Sunday morning, except that a big storm has split the tree commemorating the wartime disappearance of the Kellers' son Larry, and Larry's onetime girlfriend, Ann (Amy Newman) -- the daughter of Keller's jailed partner -- has come to visit. 

What complicates the situation is that Keller's wife, Kate, (Mindi L. Logan) still refuses after three and a half years to believe that her older son is dead. When the Kellers' younger son Chris (Thomas Stroppel) announces plans to marry Ann, unacknowledged family fissures start to show. Prejudices and secrets seep out and the Kellers' version of the American Dream, the American family, the American way, starts to crumble.

Stroppel, making his Portland debut, gives an admirable performance in a difficult role. Chris has to come across as a son of privilege devoted to his parents and perennially upbeat while harboring memories of horrible losses during his service as an officer in the war and acting as the play's main conscience.

Newman, who has turned in several fine performances as a member of the Theatre Vertigo ensemble, is equally adept in her ART debut as a daughter who must decide who's telling the truth about what happened to her father and where to put her trust.

In what may be the play's most challenging role, Fisher-Welsh does a fine job navigating the shift from seemingly successful all-American father to duplicitous bully willing to do whatever it takes to get ahead, but on opening night he failed to establish the deep devotion Joe must feel toward his remaining son for their eventual break to be as devastating as possible.

Logan was more successful at establishing Kate's nearly psychotic belief in her lost son's improbable return, but deeper levels in her character remained unplumbed as well.

Miller's language for the older, up-by-bootstraps Kellers (including grammatical mistakes and references to lack of learning) suggests a middle-class veneer over baser, Depression-driven cunning, but both Fisher-Welsh's Joe and Logan's Kate come across as far more educated and almost contemporarily suburban, making Miller's misplaced "don'ts" and folksy "ain'ts" sound silly.

Part of the problem here may be Kretzu's choice to stress the connection between the setting of Miller's story and the present by blurring the differences between them. Both Darrin J. Pufall's costumes and Jeff Seats' set (metal yard furniture and a wooden chaise lounge next to Astroturf with a white picket fence and a surrealistic image of bright blue sky and puffy clouds behind them) might fit either period. Kretzu has cited David Lynch's surrealistic approach in the movie "Blue Velvet" as one of his inspirations. But the realistic nature of the play and Kretzu's otherwise faithful approach to it don't justify these touches.

These are small problems, though, in what is generally a strong revival of a powerful play about the intersection of the American way and the American tragedy.