'All My Sons' Is Simply Superb

This is going to be a review of superlatives, so I might as well start with what’s wrong with the John Drew Theater’s current production of “All My Sons” in East Hampton.

It ends on Sunday, June 28.

Arthur Miller’s classic is not light summer fare, for the taut, forceful script has a moral center that weaves familial interaction and sorrow into the web of the wider world we mortals inhabit. “All My Sons” is about our human interconnection and how one rotten deed—a colossal one to be sure—will return to haunt the person who makes it, and everyone around him.

Essentially, the drama appears to be the story of a close-knit family getting on with their lives after World War II. All the action takes place in a single day in 1947 on the back porch and in the yard of the Keller home.

Joe Keller is an enterprising industrialist in an unnamed Ohio town who has converted his factory back into normal consumer production after manufacturing airplane engine parts for the war effort. He’s particularly content, as his son Chris has returned home after the war and will marry a nice girl. He is poised to take over a prosperous business, marry, have a family and carry on. Though his wife, Kate, is a little daft—waiting for a son who’s MIA—Joe will do anything he can to preserve that cozy continuity Joe will do anything he can to preserve that cozy continuity.

Not so fast. The drama quickly turns to its larger, darker theme. Miller based the events in the drama on a real incident that was reported in the papers. Congressional hearings were held, men were convicted, but to further reveal the plot here will certainly spoil the enjoyment of the audiences yet to come. Less is more for them.

This is true even though the play has been around since 1947, when it electrified Broadway under Elia Kazan’s direction and marked the beginning of Miller’s rightful fame and place in American theater. Sag Harbor resident Stephen Hamilton directs this vibrant staging, and two-plus hours are seemingly over before you blink.

It is not preposterous to point out that the drama harks back to Euripides’s “Iphigenia at Aulis,” where the great general Agamemnon is willing to sacrifice a daughter to win a war; his comeuppance will come later. Here, a son is sacrificed while the erring father seemingly escapes retribution. Another is punished instead.

Into the hot mess created by the protagonist Agamemnon—or Miller’s brash American, Joe Keller—steps Long Island’s own big, beefy, hot-tempered, sometimes naughty, award-winning Alec Baldwin.

And what a job he does.

Mr. Baldwin is quite simply fabulous as the family patriarch in a role written for a force such as he exudes. He’s loud, he’s tender, he’s demanding. He is hiding a great sin. He is a man pretending to be what he is not.

Let us not forget the lady, Joe’s long-suffering wife portrayed by Laurie Metcalf, for this morality play is a story of the entire Keller clan, most especially the mother Kate. Ms. Metcalf, with Tonys and Obies among her accolades, is equally superb in a role that demands her to be slightly demented at times, crystalline sane at others. This is her third time up at bat as Kate—the others were in London and Los Angeles—and she hits every scene she’s in out of the theater for a home run.

It seems dismissive to say that other cast members are up to the level of Mr. Baldwin and Ms. Metcalf, but what can a critic do when they are all that good? The four main characters are complex and the acting of the entire troupe is beyond swell.

Without dramatic flourishes of fanciful prose, hard realities come flying out of anyone’s mouth, though the moral center of the drama is son Chris, acted by Ryan Eggold, who will be familiar to fans of NBC’s “The Blacklist.” The girl whom Chris is pursuing, Ann—portrayed by Caitlin McGee—is sweet but realistic, far from saccharine.

Others include neighbors and Ann’s lawyer brother, played by David McElwee, who flies in from faraway Manhattan. One neighbor, Sue, portrayed by Bethany Caputo, serves as a kind of Greek chorus in this opus, telling truths to the audience as she ostensibly speaks to Ann.

The cast is rounded out by Tuck Milligan, who appeared in “The Cripple” two years ago at the John Drew, as well as other productions there; Ben Schnickel, stepping out from his many roles with the Hampton Theatre Company; Alicia St. Louis, who played Sonya in Guild Hall’s 2012 production of “Uncle Vanya”; and 9-year-old Cashus Lee Muse, making his official professional debut.

Cash, as he is known, would like us to know he thanks his principal at the Montauk Elementary School for letting him attend classes late so he could do this show.

Though Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” is considered the greater play—and, on the short list of drama, considered one of America’s best—“All My Sons” is not far behind in the playwright’s oeuvre. If there are any seats left, grab ’em quick, and don’t miss this splendid evening of high drama and great theater.

“All My Sons” will stage on Tuesdays through Sundays at 8 p.m. in the John Drew Theater at Guild Hall in East Hampton. The final performance on Sunday, June 28, will be held at 3 p.m. Tickets range from $25 to $150, or $23 to $145 for members. Win 10 premium tickets to the play and dine with Alec Baldwin after the show on Saturday, June 28, at The 1770 House in East Hampton. Bids begin at $10,000. Proceeds will benefit Guild Hall and its year-round programming. For more information, call (631) 324-0806, or visit guildhall.org.