Galaxy Series presents Arthur Miller's 'All My Sons'

The Montana Repertory Theater production showcases Miller’s gifts “as a powerful storyteller with keen insights into the struggles of everyday men and women,” according to director Jere Lee Hodgin.

“The power of Miller’s story about war’s consequences for both veterans and civilians is as relevant today as when the play premiered in 1947,” Hodgin said.

Set just after World War II, “All My Sons” tells the story of Joe Keller, played by Mike Boland, a dynamic small-town businessman whose factory made aircraft parts during the war and his family as they uncover the dark truth of a scandal involving faulty motor parts supplied to military.

Joe’s business partner, Steve Deever is in prison for supplying defective cylinder heads that resulted in the deaths of 21 pilots, but some neighbors of the men question Joe’s role in the transaction.

Keller, his wife, Kate (Laurie Dawn), and son Chris (Colton Swibold), are at odds about Kate’s refusal to accept that their other son, Larry, a military pilot who was lost in the war, is dead. Joe and Kate are also upset that Chris intends to propose to Larry’s high school sweetheart, Steve’s daughter, Ann (Meg Kiley Smith).

“‘All My Sons’ is truly a modern tragedy,” said CSC theater professor Roger Mays, who directed a student production of the play a few years ago.

Along with “Death of a Salesman” and “The Crucible,” it incorporates Miller’s idea that a tragedy for modern audiences must be about a common man to whom people could relate, said Mays. “Writing a modern tragedy with a hero like ourselves was an idea that (Miller) pioneered,” he said.

Tragedy always involves a “total questioning of what has previously been unquestioned,” Miller wrote in a famous 1949 essay. “Such a process is not beyond the common man. In revolutions around the world, these past thirty years, he has demonstrated again and again this inner dynamic of all tragedy.”

“All My Sons,” like Miller’s other famous plays, has been adapted for movies and television. A 1948 film version featured Edward G. Robinson and Burt Lancaster. Mays praised a 1987 adaptation that appeared on the PBS American Playhouse series and starred James Whitmore, Aidan Quinn and Joan Allen.

The Montana Repertory Theater touring company, based at the University of Montana in Missoula, has been presenting professional theater productions across the country since 1968. The cast of “All My Sons” includes actors who have performed on Broadway and in national television productions, as well as students and graduates from the university’s theater department.

Tickets and reservations for “All My Sons” are available by calling the CSC Box Office, 308-432-6207, or by email to boxoffice@csc.edu. Box office hours are weekdays from 10 a.m. to noon and 2 p.m. to 6 p.m.

“All My Sons” is the fourth event in CSC’s Galaxy Series for 2015-16. The series concludes with a March 24 performance by award winning vocalist Kathy Kosins.