Stage: All My Sons

Greenhouse Theater Center

Chicago

(773) 404-7336

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Director Kimberly Senior has mounted a “brilliantly orchestrated” production of Arthur Miller’s All My Sons, said Hedy Weiss in the Chicago Sun-Times. The 1947 tragedy traces the “incestuous downfall of two ­quintessentially Midwestern families.” Their respective patriarchs, Joe Keller and Steve Deever, are business partners who thrived during World War II by providing parts for Air Force planes. When stricter wartime quotas are imposed, however, they begin to permit cracked cylinder heads to leave the plant, thus endangering the lives of U.S. pilots. Joe is exonerated for the crime, while Steve is sent to prison, but both families must face the consequences. Senior fully grasps Miller’s indictment of “the quest for the American dream in the postwar period,” and so “breathes fire” into a work that’s seen countless productions.

All My Sons is an “archetypal father-son drama,” but Senior finds “much that is new” by focusing on the play’s women, said Chris Jones in the Chicago Tribune. Miller’s female characters are often criticized as either passive enablers or “fetishized objects of male adoration.” Senior’s production suggests the fault lies less with Miller than with “a historical lack of female directors doing Miller.” She’s cast two powerful female leads. Janet Ulrich Brooks’ “relentlessly forceful” take on Kate Keller suggests “a higher level of moral culpability for her character than the typical actress achieves.” Cora Vander Broek plays Ann Deever as a “troubled, awkward woman” as opposed to the usual ­“doe-eyed” portrayal. Together, these two “will make you feel like you’ve never met the play’s women until now.”