Berkeley Rep’s Uneven “All My Sons”

by Barry Willis

A week has passed since the press opener of Berkeley Rep’s revamp of Arthur Miller’s enduring family drama All My Sons.

Presumably some of the hysteria around this production has faded a bit, but during opening week there was plenty of it among the critical community. “Transcendent,” “revelatory,” and “a magnum opus” were among superlatives tossed around by reviewers heaping praise on the mid-century classic.

Consider this a rebuttal.

The core of the story is about a World War II-era manufacturer named Joe Keller (Jimmy Smits) whose company produced and shipped defective cylinder heads for P-40 fighter planes. Engine failure caused the demise of almost two dozen American pilots, a scandal that eventually sent Keller’s business partner and former next-door neighbor to prison.

Wartime pressure from the US Army forced Keller to authorize the shipment of the defective assemblies. He believed that the defects were fixable, while denying any complicity in the crime. His son Larry, also a fighter pilot, went down on a mission after the scandal was made public. His body was never recovered, leading his mother Kate (Wanda De Jesús) to insist that he must still be alive, a belief reinforced by neighbor Frank (Brady Morales-Woolery), an astrology fanatic who feeds Kate’s hopes with his astrological analysis.

Smits’ real-life partner, De Jesús is the anchor of this show, masterfully vacillating between rationality and delusion. Her self-control as a performer is astounding. De Jesús is nearly matched in her theatrical acumen by MaYaa Boateng as Larry’s former fiancée Annie, who’s given up hope that Larry might return and has instead set her sights on his brother Chris (Alejandro Hernandez), a WWII combat veteran who survived physically if not psychically intact.

Boateng has a comfortable, easy stage presence and a great gift for subtlety and nuance. She’s a joy to watch onstage. Brandon Gill shows a similar if less obvious gift as George, Annie’s brother and a New York City attorney who’s returned to his home town intending to challenge his father’s conviction. Their backyard reunion with the Keller family is amicable with troubling undercurrents, not only about Larry’s fate but about Joe’s potential involvement in the defective engine scandal.

The setup, like Miller’s Death of a Salesman, is a good one—encompassing manly self-image, personal honesty and responsibility, father-son relations, and as many people interpret it, a deconstruction of the American Dream.

The problem with this production is that apart from De Jesús, Boateng, and Gill, the other performers either overact or sleepwalk through their roles. The histrionics between Joe and Chris that closed the second act were especially off-putting, more appropriate for a college drama class than for an A-list theatrical production.

Furthermore, director David Mendizábal makes an obvious effort to impose modern issues of class and race onto a script in which they are only slightly implied, if at all. This was made clear in Berkeley Rep’s pre-show publicity, as if some bright new jewels could be mined from a nearly 80-year-old tale. Viewing the past through a contemporary lens yields all kinds of new distortions but not much clarity.

Artworks of any kind are effective only when they provoke emotional responses from viewers. Concepts alone won’t do that. This All My Sons is woefully deficient in the emotional resonance department. It’s competently done, but many small-town productions have done it better and with evocative, palpable sincerity. There’s a residual cynicism in this production that overshadows real emotions.

The Bay Area theater community prides itself on its sophistication, but often we react like wide-eyed rubes to big-name celebrities, regardless of what they bring to the party.

In the case of All My Sons it isn’t much, but Anna Louizos’ set is an exquisite recreation of a bucolic multi-ethnic neighborhood in the industrial Midwest, and Toni Leslie-James’ costumes are period-perfect. Both add enormously to the production’s attempt at authenticity.

It’s a pity that certain lead performers don’t rise to the challenge, and that the overall production doesn’t achieve its own potential. Responsibility for that can only be attributed to overzealous direction.

It’s tempting to call this All My Sons a valiant effort, but in retrospect it falls far short of the pre-show hype. As with everything, the standard disclaimer applies: Results may vary.

‘All My Sons’ runs through March 29 in Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s Roda Theatre, 2025 Addison St., Berkeley. Tues, Wed, Sun, 7 pm. Thurs-Sat, 8 pm. Sat & Sun, 2pm. $25–$135. 510.647.2949. berkeleyrep.org

Production photos by Kevin Berne

Barry Willis is a member of the American Theatre Critics Association and president of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle. Contact: barry.m.willis@gmail.com