Theater review: A strangely sweet and remarkably gentle ‘All My Sons’ at Hartford Stage

Hartford Stage offers a milder, more mellifluous Arthur Miller with a remarkably gentle “All My Sons.”

There are two general ways to attempt revivals of Miller plays these days: Epic or naturalistic. Originally, they were something in between. Miller was more attuned to the late 19th-century domestic realism of Ibsen or Chekhov than he was to the Method acting trend of the mid-20th century when he wrote most of his classics.

We got a touch of the “epic” style earlier this year when the Long Wharf Theatre did “A View from the Bridge” with portentous, sharply lit tableauxs, dialogue rendered as grand speeches and a ubiquitous Greek chorus of dock workers.

Hartford Stage’s rendition of 1946’s “All My Sons,” running through May 5, takes the realistic route, which is a sound choice for director (and Hartford Stage artistic director) Melia Bensussen but comes with some clear pitfalls.

For Bensussen, it’s a style that comes naturally, and one which Hartford Stage audiences saw when she directed a different family-based drama by a different Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and longtime Connecticut resident, Eugene O’Neill’s “Ah, Wilderness!” in 2021. Her efforts to make stagier statements more intimate and playable were also evident in her 2022 Hartford Stage production of Shakespeare’s “A Winter’s Tale.” She’s able to set and maintain a low-key tone that keeps the tragic elements from becoming an overdone Greek tragedy.

This restrained take on material that is often played with incendiary zeal is welcome but not always sustainable. Miller’s script is very much of its time, a mid-20th-century melodrama with a lot of baggage. At its best, it still carries great emotional weight. At worst, it can get as stilted and stodgy as a 1940s black-and-white movie.

There are a lot of plot details that are overexplained and get in the way of the action. Dialogue which sounded fresh and fiery 77 years ago can seem hackneyed and cliched now. To strengthen his points about how secrets and lies can tear families apart, Miller simplifies his idea of what a family is. The female characters are chiefly defined by whom they’re married or engaged to, not by careers or life goals.

Some lines that are often spaced out for maximum effect, or delivered Shakespeare-style with grand pronouncements, are smooshed together in string. This can help the natural feel and hasten the already long running time, but some of Miller’s grandest statements about family, responsibility and civic duty are either diminished in the mix or seem repetitive without being distinguished from lesser but similar sentiments.

The well-chosen cast and thoughtful director demonstrate that there’s a lot in “All My Sons” that’s still powerful and relevant. It’s about commerce and conscience during wartime. It’s about twisted justifications for criminal or unethical actions. It’s about unhealthy belief systems, unrealistic hopes and unshakeable faith in the status quo.

Given its size and scope, it’s also about community. Even if you know the play, you might not remember how many people are in it. There’s the main midwestern family of Joe and Kate Keller and their son Chris, who all talk so much about the missing-in-action other son Larry that this never-seen character might as well be hovering above the set. There’s Larry’s girlfriend Ann, of whom Chris is also fond, visiting from New York for a few days. Ann’s brother George makes a surprise appearance, having just visited their father, a former neighbor of the Kellers and business colleague of Joe’s who’s serving time in prison for shipping defective airplane parts overseas during wartime. There’s plenty of drama right there, but the play also features two neighbor couples, the Lubeys and the Baylisses, plus a young boy named Bert.

Hartford Stage explores Arthur Miller’s great American tragedy ‘All My Sons’

The respected character actor Michael Gaston — who often gets cast as detectives, judges and other authority figures in TV shows — makes for an imposing yet vulnerable Joe Keller. Gaston is tall and broad but sits and slumps a lot, acting his settled character’s age. He’s a nice guy who likes to sit in his yard and chat with his neighbor yet is harboring some dark secrets.

The production’s best-known performer, Marsha Mason, receives that obligatory, though annoying, “There she is!” round of applause reserved for big stars when her character first enters 20 minutes into the show. She’s perky but not pushy, sweet, not strident. The actress is now in her 80s but seems decades younger. It’s a very different performance from the distant, snippy, contemplative grandmother Mason played in her previous turn at Hartford Stage, Neil Simon’s “Lost in Yonkers” in 2022.

Mason’s character is only the third or fourth most important in the play. While she does punch up some of the existing conflicts and relationships, Kate doesn’t fuel any major shifts in the plot. It’s a steady, consistent role defined by Kate’s belief that her son Larry, a fighter plane pilot who vanished during the war, is still alive. Mason makes sure that Kate is not all grief and denial. She is genial, civil, outgoing, alert and alive but always interestingly on edge.

As Chris, the character with the most on his mind — he’s gearing up to propose while reeling from new information about his family – Ben Katz wisely holds back from being intense or self-righteous. He’s quietly virtuous, a little dumpy and withdrawn. Then, when he’s had enough, he’s fittingly fed up. Fiona Robberson does her best to make Ann, who grew up in the neighborhood but now lives in New York City, a modern woman despite her part being woefully underwritten by Miller. Reece Dos Santos as Ann’s brother George brings a dynamically dour dark-suited energy when he enters late in the second half of the play, his brooding visage a sharp contrast to the upbeat Kellers. Despite the undercurrent of unease, there’s a lot of laughter in “All My Sons.”

The rest of the 10-person cast lives up to the sense of community the play requires. Godfrey L. Simmons, Jr., as the chipper neighbor Dr. Bayliss, is a very busy local actor who has a knack for creating a distinct persona and voice for each show he’s in.

With such a steady, relatively low-key theatrical presentation, played out on a grassy lawn and a big old house in the back designed by Riw Rakkulchon, this is an unusually comfortable, almost casual and strangely sunny “All My Sons,” considering how much wailing and moaning happens at the end of the play. That may be the production’s greatest achievement: Taking an old drama, letting its rather obvious and inevitable dark elements emerge gradually and showing you how families get along before showing you how they don’t.

“All My Sons” by Arthur Miller, directed by Melia Bensussen, runs through May 5 at Hartford Stage, 50 Church St., Hartford. Performances are Wednesdays and Thursdays at 7:30 p.m., Fridays at 8 p.m., Saturdays at 2 and 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. There is a 2 p.m. matinee instead of an evening performance on May 1. $20-$100. hartfordstage.org/all-my-sons.