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Stars explained: * A production of no real merit
with failings in all areas. ** A production showing evidence of not
enough time or effort, or even talent, and which never breathes any real
life into the piece – or a show lumbered with a terrible script. *** A
good enjoyable show which might have some small flaws but has largely
achieved what it set out to do.**** An excellent show which shows a
great deal of work and stage craft with no noticeable or major
flaws.***** A four star show which has found that extra bit of magic
which lifts theatre to another plane. |
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Slow fuse to an explosion
Family at war: Keith Tompson as Joe the father, left, with Louise Broad as the mother Kate and Jacob Fazio as the son Chris All My Sons
Swan Theatre Amateur Company
Swan Theatre, Worcester
*****
ARTHUR Miller wrote
plays like an artist paints pictures. He sketches a few outlines on to a
blank canvas and then layer by layer he adds detail, colour and form
until at the end we have the complete picture. All My
Sons, from 1947, was set a year earlier, just after the Second World
War, a time of growth and optimism, of returning heroes and a little
resentment at profiteering from war in the USA and was based on a true
story spotted by Miller’s mother in a newspaper. Joe and Kate Keller live a
comfortable life in small town America. Joe has a successful engineering
business and a war hero son, Chris while Kate is, well, Kate. She still believes her other
son Larry, whose aircraft went missing more than three years ago, is
somehow still alive. Back into their lives comes
Anne Deever, Larry’s old girlfriend, and later George, her brother and
with each character comes more detail to colour in the full picture. Keith Tho Louise Broad gives us a flakey
Kate in the first act but her character gets stronger, although no
saner, as the play goes on to her crucial part in the dramatic climax.
The opening, with Kate looking lost and bewildered, a sort of dreamy
aerobics, was a little confusing. We later discovered it was to imply
she was a couple of pence short of a shilling but we would have spotted
that without the visual aids. And Broad gives us a woman who
never seems quite at home in the present, her life is trapped in her
pilot son, missing in action in 1943, who she cannot accept is dead, and
a terrible secret she carries.
The same secret which Joe
shares after he was exonerated on appeal after being jailed after 21
pilots died in crashes just before their son died, deaths attributed to
cracked cylinder heads sent out by Joe’s factory. His partner Steve was jailed
in the affair and we discover it is his daughter Anne that Chris hopes
to marry. Poppy Cooksey-Heyfron is a sweet, pretty thing of an Ann who
sees good wherever she can and who gave up hopes of Larry returning a
long time ago, despite Kate’s urging to wait for him. She has never seen or spoken
to her jailed father who was blamed for the deaths, and since the family
moved away after he was jailed had heard nothing of how he was until
that is brother George, newly qualified lawyer, all anger and aggression
arrives fresh from jail and the first visit to his father in three
years, accusing Joe of a cover up. Jimmy Corbett is making his
first appearance on stage, not that you would have known it with a
confident performance, clashing with Chris, played by University of
Worcester theatre student Jacob Fazzio, who had the big advantage in the
accent department of being a study abroad student from the USA. Not that the accents were bad
mind you, a little variable in places with the odd Welsh or Irish
inflection here and there, but all in all pretty consistent and
believable, so much so that if you were told one of the cast was
American you might be pushed to decide which one. This is a play where not a lot
happens, one simple set designed by Peter Read, which depends entirely
upon the words and the actors, and in the hands of director Tim Crow it
develops a nice rhythm building up the tension scene by scene to the
climax, and in the intimate confines of the studio we are in the back
yard by the Colonial porch of the Keller house. There is good support from the
neighbours, Tom Martin as Jim, the doctor, who doesn’t seem to like
patients, who has moved into the old Deever house next door along with
his wife Sue, who calls a spade a spade with a smile with the odd turn
of the knife along the way. On the other side are are the
Lubey family with Cora, George’s ex-girlfriend who married soon after he
went off to war and, three years later, has three childen – they didn’t
have satellite TV in those days.
Cora is a picture of
domesticity while her husband Frank, played by STAC newcomer Lewis
Jones, managed to avoid the draft at every turn by being always a year
older than the call up age. He is into astrology and
convinces Kate that son Larry could not have died because his stars were
favourable on the day he went missing. Sadly for Lewia Anne has an
explosive piece of paper that trumps his well researched charts. A paper
which is virtually a double death sentence. A honorable mention too for
Swan Youth Theatre member Ben Sears who plays Bert who has been made an
honorary policeman by Joe. Miller is both difficult and
easy for actors, easy in that the parts are something an actor can get
their teeth into, characters with depth and hidden traits, characters
actors can grow into, yet his plays are difficult in that the actors
have to tell their story with little in the way of action. They control
the pace, create the necessary tension and keep the interest with just
Miller’s words to help them, and they did him proud. To 15-03-14 Roger
Clarke |
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mpson
as Joe is making Americans a specialty after playing George in STAC’s
excellent Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf? And he is totally believable as
the successful Joe, a big gregarious bear of a man hiding a dark secret
behind a wall of bon homie.