The show creeps up on the audience in the seemingly benign back yard of the Keller home in 1946. In the company of folksy neighbors Sally Hecksel, Mark Polzin, we meet the likable Joe Keller, masterfully embodied by Michael Hays, playing fun “police games” with engaging neighbor boy Bert (Steven Wulfekuhler). Joe's wife, Kate (Eve Davidson) is haunted by the son who is “missing in action” in World War II.
The other son, Chris (Jeff Magnuson) is charmingly in love with his missing brother’s charming girlfriend Ann (Meghan Eldred) and working in his father’s successful factory, which has supplied defective airplane parts that have resulted in pilots’ deaths — but it was his business partner’s fault, or was it? The partner is the father of Ann, and her brother George (Joe Dickson) arrives mid-play with figurative cattle-prods of anger that escalate the conflict.
Greedy busybody neighbor (Sarah Hauck) and her doctor husband (Charles Sartorius) who can’t follow his dream of medical research because it doesn’t make enough money, provide the backdrop of societal pressures and moral problems of our society on which Miller focuses.
As with his popular 12 Angry Men last season, Director Bob Robinson has demonstrated the power of drama in this tragic tale.
All My Sons continues through January 17 — www.riverwalktheatre.com
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