Alaska Employment Law

Arthur Miller’s All My Sons, written in 1947 when Miller was just 32, preceded Death of a Salesman but, like Salesman, focuses on the rupture of a family that has not dealt with crucial family secrets.  The story that slowly comes to light in All My Sons (even as the play’s scenes become, literally, darker and darker) concerns the shipment during World War 2 of cracked cylinder heads for P-40 fighter planes by a factory owned by Joe Keller, who comes out of his quiet home and into his yard on a Sunday morning to read the paper.  He sees that an apple tree has blown down in an overnight windstorm.  Neighborly events transpire. 

We learn that Kate and Joe Keller have two sons, Larry and Chris.  Larry, a pilot during the War, has been missing for three years and is presumed dead by everyone but Kate, who is just this side of irrational about the subject.  Chris, the heir-apparent to Joe’s business, has asked old friend (and Larry’s former fiancée) Ann Deever to the house because he wants to propose marriage to her.  When Joe realizes this, he is provoked into having an argument with his son, fearing as he does that confronting Kate with the fact that even Ann has given up on Larry will force her to deal, bitterly, hopelessly, with Larry’s death.   Ann is estranged from her father Steve, who is serving prison time for having knowingly shipped out those cracked cylinder heads, resulting in the crashes and deaths of over 20 P-40 pilots, while he was the Kellers’ neighbor and a partner in Joe’s business.  It sounds complicated, but the story evolves in a sensible way in the play.

The Huntington here in Boston has hit a home run on this one.  While this play is 60 years old, it dealt with contemporary issues on its debut.  The set is just right (I am old enough to remember when yard furniture looked like that), and the players do a fine job, especially Will Lyman as Joe, a man who knows “we can’t be Jesus here on earth.”  Mr. Lyman is exceptional.  Karen MacDonald as Kate is powerful, though sometimes a little florid, but that’s in her character.  Chris is played by Lee Aaron Rosen, a young man (shades of John-Boy Walton sometimes) whose values and standards are very high, up where values and standards have been known to shatter and break.  The play concludes in darkness, and the audience when I attended was floored.  All My Sons is very much worth your time.