Skewed Family – Winnipeg Free Press

Inside each house, there is enough domestic drama to fill a three-act play. Most families keep their trials and traumas under lock and key, doing their best to silence their outbursts, wipe away the stains of turmoil, and pretend nothing happened in the first place.

Not the Kellers.

The central family of Arthur Miller all my kids air out your dirtiest clothes in the backyard.

Set in the immediate post World War II era, all my kids it was for Miller a transformative exploration of a new brand of national post-traumatic denial. Upon its premiere in 1947, it ushered in a confrontational era in American entertainment, defined by rugged cynicism and simmering anger at what had been lost at home, even with the biggest battle supposedly won there.

In a brilliant and stunningly performed revival of Miller’s epic second full-length play, the independent company 28th Minute places audiences at the Rachel Browne Theater amid the still-reverberating aftershocks of war. Nearly 80 years after Miller wrote it, the final product still rings true.

As the show begins, the soft melody of Cole Porter It would be so nice to come home lava over Kellers’ gazebo. It is the first and, thankfully, the only time that director George Toles has allowed nostalgia to enter the picture.

With a storm just over and the paint on his modest home still stained with moisture, Joe Keller (played with subtle menace and undeniable seriousness by Darcy Fehr) sits in a cane chair and reads the newspaper. On the cover is an image at the top of the page of the mushroom cloud of an atomic bomb.

But Joe, who did his job during the war making munitions, doesn’t read the news in the paper anymore, he tells his bumbling neighbor, Frank (Jesse Bergen). At 61, a late-life businessman, Joe is more interested in classified ads.

Meanwhile, his son Chris (a notable Justin Fry) reads the book section, even though he rarely reads a book. “I like to be aware of my ignorance,” he says.

Joe’s wife Kate (a fierce and uptight Heather Roberts) reads between the lines the mention of their son, Larry, who went missing during a flying mission over three years ago. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, Kate believes that her son will return.

Hey, we all read the newspaper for different reasons.

Even with Larry MIA, his presence looms large: shortly after he disappeared, the Kellers planted a lone sapling as a memorial. It is a direct and effective metaphor: when the storm arrives, the trunk breaks, further destroying a family tree already torn by the gears of war and speculation.

While the action takes place in the Kellers’ backyard, much of it is driven by their former neighbors, the Deevers. Her daughter Ann (a bubbly, seething Hayley Stacey) was set to marry Larry, and now she intends to share her life with Chris; no one knows what he will say or his brother George (Kevin Ramberran, perfectly unbalanced and erratic) will do.

His parents are elsewhere. Mother Deever is in hiding, driven out of town for the shame of her husband’s imprisonment.

Steve Deever is serving time for his role in shipping faulty cylinder heads, which resulted in the deaths of 21 pilots during the war; it’s a fatal mistake for which his business partner, Joe, evaded the penalty.

While Miller’s script is structured with a tense pace that refuses to budge, that alone isn’t enough to ensure a solid production. The realization of the artistic vision for this show is nearly complete. What makes it even more impressive is that a performance of this caliber was produced on a relatively small budget, with cast members doing much of the work behind the scenes.

In addition to playing George, Ramberran designed the show’s sound, billboard, and produced all my kids with Toles. Roberts coordinated the elegant wardrobe; Stacey and Stephen Sim, who conveys fantasy and wisdom as neighbor Dr. Jim Bayliss, handled publicity. Jonalyn Basconcillo fills three roles as set designer, stage manager and prop coordinator.

A lot can be learned by watching the actors in the background, who never disengage from the action in front of them. This is particularly true of Stacey’s Ann Deever, who is often forced to listen to uncomfortable conversations that belittle her own family and question her own loyalty. Even if the audience focuses on Fehr, Fry, or Roberts, there, in the background, Stacey’s eyes shoot up, her breathing deepens, and the future of her character flashes before her eyes.

all my kids is, ultimately, a show about the fissure and the existence of two worlds on either side of the here and now. While it was written after a war and focused on the guilt of surviving and the shame involved in the pursuit of wartime profit, it remains relevant as we continue to rebuild our communities in the wake of an ongoing pandemic.

In 1947, Miller asked the public to consider how they might overcome such loss, pain, and gracelessness.

In 2023, there is still no sign of an agreed response.

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com

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