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Arts and Entertainment

Cracks in facade of the American Dream

FLC presents Arthur Miller’s ‘All My Sons’
Dennis Elkins, left, plays Joe Keller, and Mike Gertsen-Rogers plays Chris Keller in Fort Lewis College’s production of “All My Sons.”

A prosperous businessman with a terrible secret. A young war hero suffering from survivor’s guilt. And a mother who refuses to let go.

Arthur Miller’s classic stage drama “All My Sons” paints a rich and tragic portrait of family life in post World War II America, exposing cracks in the facade of post-war perfection that widen until the story collapses in a startling and indelible finale.

Fort Lewis College, in collaboration with Merely Players and the Durango Arts Center, will launch a production of “All My Sons” today at the Durango Arts Center Theater. The production will run through Oct. 26 with six performances at DAC.

The play stars FLC Theatre Department chairman Dennis Elkins as Joe Keller, a businessman whose decision to put his family first came at a horrible cost. Dolores Mazurkewicz plays his wife, Kate, who clings to the belief that their son, Larry, who went missing three years ago in the war, is still alive. Mike Gertsen-Rogers plays their other son, Chris, a war hero who wants to marry Larry’s sweetheart. And Molly Quinn plays the sweetheart, Ann, whose own family’s downfall is revealed to be linked to Joe.

It’s a complicated tapestry of guilt, secrets and familial duty that unfolds in the span of a single day in the setting of the Keller’s backyard. What begins with a polished-looking family that has seemingly achieved the American Dream grows darker as the lines between accountability and morality are blurred and characters are plunged into tragedy.

“That’s the veneer, that everything is natural and normal, but underneath everything is cracked,” said director Mona Wood-Patterson. “(Miller) was questioning this great American dream and what we sacrificed in the war.”

Fort Lewis College brought in Wood-Patterson and Charles Ford of Merely Players to direct and do set design on the production, and opted to stage “All My Sons” at the DAC Theater because the college’s theater building was undergoing renovations.

Elkins said FLC wanted to produce a play with a small cast by an American playwright that would give students a chance to experience naturalistic acting. When Wood-Patterson came back with “All My Sons,” he said, it fit.

“It’s a great piece,” Elkins said. “And it’s probably one in the canon of theater pieces that our students ought to be exposed to. Arthur Miller period should be something that are students should have an experience with.”

Wood-Patterson said she suggested “All My Sons” because it fit the criteria of what FLC was looking for, but also because it would present a chance to work on a piece by Miller, one of her favorite playwrights.

“He is brilliant,” she said. “His plays are so rich and layered, they are just an art form, a gold mine.”

Wood-Patterson said it was important for her for the play to be very natural. To that end, Ford designed an impressive set, squeezing the back of a pale-blue house with working lights, a picket fence, a lawn and a small patio onto the small DAC stage.

The idea, he said, is “this very real environment and these very unreal people inhabiting it, and that tension between what is real and what is not real.”

And despite this innocuous setting, there is a disquieting unease that infuses the play from scene one, when the Keller family discovers the tree they planted in honor of Larry has been toppled in a storm.

From there, what starts as another day in this family’s life grows more painful with revelations of deception, an examination of the conflict between generations and a look at a young man’s disillusionment and the irreparable harm of war. The themes still hold up today, Ford said.

“Is family the most important thing? Do we owe our fellow man and how far does that extend? Where do we draw the lines of who do we protect?” Ford said. “I feel that this play is very timeless. It still, it just resonates.”

kklingsporn@durangoherald.com

If you go

Fort Lewis College, in collaboration with Merely Players and the Durango Arts Center, will present “All My Sons” at 7:30 p.m. today at the Durango Arts Center Theater, 802 East Second Ave. The play will continue Saturday and Oct. 23-26. Tickets are $22 general admission and $19 for DAC members. Visit www.durangoarts.org for more information.



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