Curio Theatre Company presents Arthur Miller's 'All My Sons'

Director Gay Carducci seizes on the universality and timelessness of these subjects, creating a staging that skillfully limns the past and present. The extraordinarily detailed set (by Paul Kuhn, the company’s founder and artistic director) and costumes (by Aetna Gallagher, who also takes on a small acting role in the production) contain elements suggesting the period in which Miller wrote, as well as details recognizable to a contemporary audience. When the characters speak of international conflict, they could be referencing World War II or any of our current ongoing quagmires.

Alpha versus beta

I confess a certain allergy to Miller, with his bald self-righteousness and aggressively masculine view of society as a struggle between alphas and betas. Even when he has a salient point to make — and All My Sons, which investigates the impetus to value profit over human life, has several — he wields symbolism and metaphor like a lead pipe, ready to clock an audience over the head with his morality. Most of the time, I’d happily assign his work to the theatrical ash heap, Willy Loman included.

Thankfully, though, Carducci and the Curio ensemble blunt the play’s rougher edges. Rather than wallowing in melodrama, they take a naturalistic approach, which smooths out some of Miller’s nakedly sanctimonious writing. I’ve seen several productions of All My Sons in the past, and this is the first time I felt like I was watching a real family filled with real people.

Kuhn does yeoman’s service, taking on the central role of Joe Keller in addition to crafting the set. A proud, self-satisfied businessman, he has rebuilt his prosperous life after his manufacturing company sold defective airplane parts to the army during the war. A full exoneration placed the blame on his partner, Steve Deever, who sits in prison.

New relevance

The play opens with Joe’s son Chris (Chase Byrd) intending to marry Ann Deever (Nastassja Whitman), his ex-partner’s daughter and the former sweetheart of his other son, Larry. A pilot, Larry has been missing in action for years — the family has largely moved on save for Joe’s wife, Kate (Trice Baldwin), who holds out futile hope.

Miller sets a recipe for high drama, especially with the arrival of Ann’s brother George (Carlo Campbell, a standout), a lawyer hellbent on clearing his father’s name. Although the plot’s springs turn predictably, Curio continually finds new relevance, thanks largely to unexpected but welcome performance choices.

It would be easy to play Joe as a braying, fire-breathing monster, but Kuhn’s daringly low-key performance conveys a darker, more sinister edge. When he explains to his son that he had no choice but to peddle his faulty equipment — to not do so would have put him out of business — he is reasoned and measured, his voice never rising in anger or defense. He grounds his moral relativism in scary logic, and — to this audience member, at least — achieves a terrible rationality that eludes even Miller.

Baldwin too rejects stereotype, refusing to play Kate as unhinged, and Byrd makes Chris’s idealism a little less wide-eyed than usual. Whitman excels in communicating Ann’s complicated position, stuck between a love for Chris and his family and lingering loyalty to her own. That the Kellers are portrayed as a white family and the Deevers African American in this production adds a level of resonance to the story, both historically and in a contemporary context.

Curio didn’t convert me to Arthur Miller — I still had to stifle giggles over some of the outrageously mawkish dialogue. And don’t get me started on the damn tree, planted in Larry’s memory, whose collapsing during a lightning storm sets the play in motion.

But the company deserves praise for treating the play as a living, breathing work to be engaged with rather than a museum piece. It cements Curio's well-earned reputation as one of Philadelphia’s most interesting and inventive producers.