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Arts & Entertainment

Las Positas College to Present Arthur Miller's Classic Drama "All My Sons"

Arthur Miller’s first Tony Award winning play, “All My Sons,” was inspired by a true story about a successful businessman who knowingly sold the government defective airplane parts during World War II. Performances are Nov. 11, 12, 18 and 19 at 8 p.m. and Nov. 13 and 20 at 2 p.m. in the Black Box Theater in the Barbara Fracisco Mertes Center for the Arts. Tickets are $12 for general admission and $8 for students and seniors. Tickets available at www.brownpapertickets.com or 1 (800) 838-3006.

First performed on Broadway in 1947 with a run of 328 performances, the play won the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award and the Tony Award for Best Play. It enjoyed a successful Broadway revival in 2008 with the cast of John Lithgow, Dianne Wiest, Patrick Wilson and Katie Holmes in her Broadway debut.

Las Positas College Theater Instructor and “All My Sons” Director Wesley Morgan said he chose the play because of its subject matter. “‘All My Sons’ explores themes of self determination, familial loyalty, moral responsibility, war profiteering and the struggle of generational views of the all-American dream,” Morgan said.

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“Arthur Miller has written in ‘All My Sons’ a twentieth-century Greek tragedy with the Second World War as a back drop,” Morgan explained. Joe Keller, the owner of a metal works factory in middle America, in an effort to establish financial security for his family, makes a serious error in judgment that will haunt him and his family for as long as they live.

The play has a cast of 10 actors who represent the family and friends of the Keller family, prominent residents of a Midwest suburban neighborhood. The Kellers are: Joe, father of two sons; sons Larry and Chris, both soldiers in WWII; and Kate, Joe’s loyal and loving wife.     

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As the play opens, we learn that Larry has been missing in action for more than three years and that his brother Chris is bringing Larry’s former fiancée, Ann Deever, to visit the family home where he plans to

propose marriage to her. With this inciting incident, the complications begin, Morgan explained. Kate has been in denial about Larry’s true status because, if he is dead, family secrets that have been tenuously left unspoken and ignored surely will be exposed.

Ann also is the former next door neighbor and daughter of Joe’s former business partner who was sent to prison for allowing defective cylinder heads to be sold and installed in WWII fighter planes, causing the deaths of 21 pilots. In a court case, Joe denied responsibility and eluded conviction.       

“The play begins on a bright sunny Sunday in August, and with the arrival of both Ann and her brother George, the truths of the Kellers’ and the Deevers’ lives are to be gradually illuminated, as darkness of their consequences slowly envelopes the Kellers’ quiet suburban home,” Morgan said.

The Las Positas College production cast includes veteran actor and Livermore resident Tim Ackerman as Joe Keller, Chris Macomber of Oakland as Kate Keller, Brennan Pryor of Tracy as Chris Keller, Jasmine Richard, of Tracy as Ann Deever, Josh Ze of Livermore as George Deever; with Kathi Hileman, Rich Cook, Jeremy La Clair, Katie Lloyd, Adam Lagodzinski and Adam Turk. Production design is by Jeremy Hamm.

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