Heaven knows Miller was allergic to subtlety, with a tendency to italicize his messages, but the man had few peers when it came to crafting high-stakes moral showdowns. Under the direction of David Esbjornson, a superb Huntington cast gives us Miller at his fiercest and most unflinching. During the climactic moments of “All My Sons,’’ everyone in the Boston University Theatre seemed to be holding their breath.
While this “Sons’’ is replete with period flavor, its focus on the deadly consequences of unethical business behavior during wartime makes it as timely as the latest dispatches from Iraq or Afghanistnan, or the latest news of another obscene bonus package at a bailed-out Wall Street firm.
Miller was just 32 years old when “All My Sons’’ premiered on Broadway, where it ran for 328 performances and won a Tony Award. Like “Death of a Salesman,’’ which came two years later, “Sons’’ revolves around a flawed father, a son whose hero worship sours into disillusionment, and a mother desperately trying to hold the family together.
But Joe Keller’s character flaws are far more severe - and more lethal - than those of poor, deluded Willy Loman. Joe is a successful businessman whose company manufactured airplane engine parts during World War II. When a large batch of engine cylinder heads turned out to have cracks in them, Joe knowingly sold them to the Army Air Force anyway, resulting in the deaths of 21 pilots whose P-40s crashed. Then Joe found a way to shift responsibility to Steve Deever, his neighbor and business partner, who was sent to prison.
Now, Joe’s son Chris has decided to propose marriage to Steve’s daughter, Ann. This creates reverberations in the Keller home because Ann was the girlfriend of Chris’s brother Larry, who was reported missing in action during the war.
Kate Keller fiercely opposes the marriage, because she clings doggedly to the belief that Larry is still alive. Meanwhile, Ann’s brother George has just visited their father in prison and is now traveling to see her with something urgent to tell her.
