Berkshire Bright Focus...

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Three Continents

From the ship at sea 1

From the ship at sea 2

From the ship at sea 3

From the ship at sea, 4

From the ship at sea, 5

From the ship at sea , 6

From Rio!!

The Trip Home

NEW SHORT STORIES

Nothing There For You

Nothing There For You, 2

Nothing There For You, 3

Nothing There For You, 4

Chase of The Thrill, 1

Chase of the Thrill, 2

Chase of the Thrill, 3

Chase of The Thrill, 4

Of Course, part1

Of Course, part 2

Of Course, part 3

Of Course, concluded

In Memory: Of My Cruise 1

In Memory: Of My Cruise 2

In Memory: Of My Cruise 3

In Memory: Of My Cruise 4

Las Vegas, 1

Las Vegas, 2

Las Vegas, 3

Las Vegas, 4

Las Vegas, concluded

Mad Moment #1

Mad Moment #2

Mad Moment #3

Mad Moment #4

Margaret Never Knows, 1

Margaret Never Knows, 2

Margaret Never Knows, 3

Margaret Never Knows, 4

Margaret Never Knows, 5

Remote, part 1

Remote, part 2

Remote, part 3

Remote, concluded

POETRY

April's Fools

Easter Sunday

...simple answers

And when they come at me

Fogged In

Barrington Stage 2018

7th Annual 10 x 10

BSC ARCHIVED REVIEWS

10x102017

10x10 Upstreet Five

10x10 Upstreet2015

10X10 Upstreet 2014

10X10 On North

10X10Upstreet

Absurd Person Singular

Alix Korey

All My Sons

American Son

An Enemy of the People

Art

Bashir Lazhar

The Best of Enemies

The Birds

BNelson's All-Male Revue

Breaking the Code

Brel in the Berkshires

Broadway Bounty Hunter

Butler

Camping with Henry & Tom

Carousel

Celebrating...William Fin

Character Man

The Chosen

Clybourne Park revisited

Company

The Crucible

Dancing Lessons

Dr. Ruth, All the Way

Engagements

The Fantasticks

Fiddler on the Roof

Freud's Last Session

Fyvush Finkel

The Game

Gaslight

Georgie - BSC

Going to St. Ives

The Golem of Havana

Guys and Dolls

His Girl Friday

I Am My Own Wife

Kimberly Akimbo

BSC's Kiss Me, Kate

KT Sullivan: Colored Lts.

Kunstler

A Little More Alive

Lord of the Flies

Lost in Yonkers

Love Letters

Lungs

Man of La Mancha

The Memory Show

Mormons, Mothers...etc.

Much Ado About Nothing

Muckrakers

My Name is Asher Lev

Mysteries of Harris Burdi

The North Pool

On the Town

The Other Place

peerless

The Pirates of Penzance

Presto Change-O

N. Coward's Private Lives

Ragtime

Romance in Hard Times

Scott and Hem. . . .

See How They Run

See Rock City. . .

Shining City

Sleuth

Southern Comfort

Speech & Debate

A Streetcar Named Desire

Sweeney Todd

Taking Steps

This

This Wonderful Life

To Kill a Mockingbird

Tribes

Trumbo

21st...Spelling Bee

Underneath the Lintel

Veils

Vincent

The Violet Hour

The Whipping Man

Working on a Special Day

Zero Hour

Berkshire Opera Company

Berkshire Fringe Festival

Le Nozze di Figaro

La Boheme

Berkshire Opera Festival

Ariadne auf Naxos

Madama Butterfly

Berkshire Theatre 2017

Lost Lake

BTG Arsenic and Old Lace

At Home at the Zoo

Children of a Lesser God

Million Dollar Quartet

BTF ARCHIVED REVIEWS

Anna Christie

BTF Archive

Babes in Arms

Bells are Ringing

Benefactors

Birthday Boy

The Book Club Play

Brace Yourself

Broadway by the Year

Candida

Candide

The Caretaker

The Cat and The Canary

Cat on a BTG Roof

Cedars

BTG's A Chorus Line

A Christmas Carol

Christmas Carol 2010

A Class Act

Colonial Christmas Carol

Constellations

Deathtrap at BTG

A Delicate Balance

Design For Living

Dutch Masters

Edith

The Einstein Project

Eleanor: Her Secret Journ

Endgame

Extremities

Faith Healer

Fiorello

Frankie and Johnny in the

The Guardsman

Ghosts

A Hatful of Rain

The Homecoming

Homestead Crossing

In the Mood

K2

The Last Five Years

The Lion in Winter

A Little Night Music

Little Shop at Colonial

A Lover's Tale

Eric Hill's Macbeth

A Man For All Seasons

Mary and Edith

Moonchildren

The Mystery of Irma Vep

Neighbor/Smile

No Wake

Noel Coward in Two Keys

Oklahoma!

Pageant Play

Period of Adjustment

Poe

Prisoner of 2nd Avenue

Puppetmaster of Lodz

Re-View Puppetmaster

Red Remembers

Same Time, Next Year

Sick

The Stone Witch

Sylvia

Thoreau or, Return to Wal

A Thousand Clowns

The Who's Tommy

Waiting for Godot

Bridge Street Theatre

F&J in the Claire De Lune

Bridge St. Thtr Archive

Dream Child

Frankenstein: etc.

Gamma Rays/Marigolds

Holiday Memories

How To Pray

...Kieron and Jade

Lucky Lindy

Redwood Curtain

Souvenir at Bridge St.

The Tavern

Broadway/Off-Broadway

Three Plays in NYC

Capital Rep

Blithe Spirit

Paris Time

She Loves Me in Albany

Sex With Strangers

CapRep Mamma Mia!

Assisted Loving

Chester Theatre - 2017

Folk

Every Brilliant Thing

Skeleton Crew

I and You

Chester Theatre Archive

Almost, Maine

Animals Out of Paper

Chester's Amish Project

Annapurna

Arms On Fire

The Betrothed

Blackbird

blink

Body Awareness

The Dishwashers

The Gospel. . .Discord

An Iliad

Madagascar

Memory House

The Mountaintop

My Jane

A Number

Oh God

Sister Play

The Swan

Tilted House

Copake Theatre Company

Nine Months

I Do! I Do!

Sour Grapes

Talking Heads

Grace & Glorie

Dorset Theatre Fest 2017

American Buffalo

Legend of Georgia McBride

Baskerville

Downstairs

Tarnation Russell Colvin

DORSET ARCHIVED REVIEWS

All in the Timing

Barefoot in the Park

Boeing-Boeing by Camolett

Christie's The Mousetrap

Clybourne Park

Deathtrap

Dear Elizabeth

Dial "M" For Murder

Fallen Angels

Good People

The Hollow

I Hate Hamlet

Intimate Apparel

June Moon

Lady Day at Emerson's Bar

Marry Me a Little

Mauritius

Merton of the Movies

Murder on the Nile

Noises Off

Out of the City

Outside Mullingar

Red

St. Nicholas

S Holmes & the Jersey Lil

Superior Donuts

Table Manners

The Novelist

The Pavilion

The Scene

The Way of The World

The Whore and Mr. Moore

A Year with Frog and Toad

Ghent Playhouse 2017/2018

Cabaret in Ghent

Clever Little Lies

The Little Mermaid. . .

Greater Tuna

Ghent Playhouse Archives

Ghent's "Almost, Maine"

Ali Baba...4 Tea Thieves

Ayckbourn at Ghent

Belles

Boeing-Boeing GPH

The Boys Next Door

Clue: The Musical

Complete Wm Shakespeare

The Countess

Dancing at Lughnasa

Enchanted April

Coward's Fallen Angels

Fantasticks

Ghent's "Dial M...."

Grapes of Wrath

Hair Loom!

Hay Fever

The Heiress

Heroes in Ghent

House of Dwarfs

The Imaginary Invalid

Jack and the Beanstalk

Jerry's Girls

Lettice and Lovage

Ghent "Little Shop"

Lost: The Grimm Years

Madwoman of Chaillot

Menagerie A Trois

Mothers and Sons

Mrs. Farnsworth

My Cousin Rachel

O.P.M. at Ghent

Once Upon a Mattress

Over the River, etc.

Pack of Lies

Picnic

Prisoner/2nd Avenue

Puss in Boots

Rabbit Hole in Ghent

Robin Hood: 50 Shades. .

6 Women...

Ghent's 39 Steps

True West Ghent

The Turn of the Scrooge

The 25th Annual Putnam...

Urinetown

The Weir

You're a Good Man, Charli

Goodspeed Musicals

Rags

Thoroughly Modern Musical

Chasing Rainbows

Bye Bye Birdie/Goodspeed

Goodspeed's Anything Goes

Hubbard Hall

The Velocity of Autumn

Mystery of Edwin Drood

menagerie

Book Club Play

HH - Crucible

Illiad

Tartuffe

Shakespeare's King Lear

Parellel Lives

Ondine

Hubbard Shirley Valentine

Shakespeare's Macbeth

The Drawer Boy

You Can't Take It With Yo

Literature

An Unlikely Hero

Antibes

B ob Dylan

Christmasville

A Lesser Saint

Upstreet, #1

MacHaydn Theater-2017

Hello, Dolly! '17

Spamalot

McH's Sweeney Todd

Saturday Night Fever

McHs Anything Goes

Dirty Rot. Scoundrels

Dreamcoat

MACHAYDN ARCHIVED REVIEWS

Mac-Haydn's Addams Family

The All Night Strut

All Shook Up

Annie

Anything Goes

The Baker's Wife

Beauty and the Beast

Best Little Whorehouse...

Brigadoon

Bye Bye Birdie

Carousel at the Mac

Chicago

Chicago (2016)

Chorus Line

Crazy For You

Damn Yankees

Drowsy Chaperone in Chath

Fair Lady

Mac Fantasticks

Fiddler in Chatham

forty-second Street

Machaydn's The Full Monty

Guys and Dolls in Chatham

Gypsy

Hairspray

Hairspray 2015

Hello, Dolly!

High Society

Into the Woods

Joseph. . .Dreamcoat

Jekyll and Hyde

The King and I

Kiss Me, Kate

La Cage aux Folles

Legally Blonde

Les Miz

Love a Piano

Mac-Haydn's Grease

Mame

Meet Me in St. Lou

The Music Man

Nice Work If You Can Get

9 to 5

Nunsense

Oliver!

Phantom

The Producers

R.D. Housewives of C.C.

Rent in Chatham

The Secret Garden

Show Boat

Singin' In The Rain

Sister Act

Smokey Joe's Cafe

Sondheim Putting It Toget

The Sound of Music

South Pacific

State Fair

Sweet Charity

Swing!

Thoroughly Modern Millie

West Side Story

Xanadu

Yng Frankenstein

Music

10 mini trios

Journeys by Robert Baksa

Mary Verdi: Precious Love

Mahagonny

New Stage Theatre Company

Death and The Maiden

Blood Sky

Fahrenheit 451

The Maids

Northern Stage

Living Together

NYSTI

Romeo & Juliet

And Then There Were None

King Island Christmas

A Legend of Sleepy Hollow

The Philadelphia Story

Yours, Anne

Orphan Train

Of Mice and Men

Twelve Angry Jurors

Anastasia

1776

Macbeth

Miracle On 34th Street

Arsenic and Old Lace

American Soup

Ordeal By Innocence

Reunion

Oldcastle Theatre 2017

Broadway Bound

A Comedy of Tenors in VT

Mauritius at Oldcastle

Moonlight & Magnolias

Shipwrecked

OLDCASTLE ARCHIVED REVIEW

"Almost, Maine" in VT

Around the World in. . .

Beauty Queen of Leenane

Big River

Black Comedy

Cabaret

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

The City of Conversation

ConsulTrampAmerica'sSweet

Doubt in Vermont

4000 Miles

Fox on the Fairway

The Grass is Greener

Last Days of Mickey & Jea

Oldcastle Lion-Winter

My Fair Lady

Night and Her Stars

Northern Boulevard

One Two Three

Other People's Money

Rembrandt's Gift

The Ride Down Mount Morgn

S. Holmes-Knight's Gambit

A Song For My Father

Strange Disappearance of

Tallley's Folly

Third

39 Steps

Time Stands Still

Proctors Schenectady

The Humans

Proctors Les Miserables

The Bodyguard, the musica

Finding Neverland

Fun Home

The Color Purple

Wicked

Restaurants

Bezalel Gables

Blantyre

Brazillian

Burrito Bound

SPICE!

Sand Lake Center for Arts

SLCA Crucible

Sand Lake Annie

In the Heat of the Night

Schenectady Civic Players

Other Desert Cities

An Inspector Calls

Shakespeare & Co - 2017

Carnage, God of

Perfect Pair of Wharton

Tempest in the Garden

S&Cos Intimate Apparel

"Dream" in the Dell

Cymbeline 2017

S&C4000miles

Shakespeare & Co - 2016

Sotto Voce

The Two Gentlemen/Verona

Cry "Havoc!"

S&Co's "Or,"

Twelfth Night in the Dell

The Merchant of Venice

The Emperor of the Moon

Ugly Lies the Bone

The Taming

Shakespeare & Co. - 2015

An Illiad at S&Co

Red Velvet

Mother of the Maid

The Unexpected Man

The Comedy of Errors

Henry V

The How and The Why

Shakespeare & Co. - 2014

Private Eyes

Vanya, Sonia, Etc.

Henry IV, Parts One &Two

6-Actor Romeo and Juliet

TCWOWSabridged

Julius Caesar in Lenox

A Midsummer Night's Dream

The Servant of Two Master

Shakespeare's Will

Shakespeare & Co -2013

Private Lives

It's a Wonderful Life

Accomplice

Kaufman's Barber Shop

Beauty Queen/Leenane

Mother Courage...

Richard II

Love's Labour's Lost

Heroes

Master Class

Shakespeare&Co - 2012

The Liar

2012 Santaland

S&Co's The 39 Steps

Satchmo at the Waldorf

The Tempest

Parasite Drag

King Lear

Tale of Allergist's Wife

Cassandra Speaks

Shakespeare & Co-2011

The Learned Ladies

Cymbeline

Santaland

War of the Worlds

Red Hot Patriot

Broadway in the Berkshire

Baskervilles (Revisited)

Romeo and Juliet, 2011

The Hollow Crown

As You Like It

The Memory of Water

SHAKES & CO ARCHIVES

All's Well That Ends Well

Bad Dates

The Canterville Ghost

Cindy Bella

Real Inspector Hound

Dreamer Examines Pillow

Goatwoman of Corvis Count

Golda's Balcony

Hound of Baskervilles

Irma Vep, The Mystery of

Julius Caesar

The Ladies Man

Liaisons Dangereuses

Mengelberg and Mahler

Othello

Pinter's Mirror

Richard III

Romeo and Juliet

The Santaland Diaries

Sea Marks

Shirley Valentine

The Taster

Twelfth Night

White People

The Winter's Tale

Sharon Playhouse - 2017

Sharon's Music Man

Far Away

Minor Character

Sharon Playhouse Archive

Big River in Sharon

Georgie

Gypsy in Sharon

TriArts' Les Miz

Little Shop of Horrors

Merrily We Roll Along

Quartet

Special Attractions

The Last Flapper

Karaoke Killer

Capitol Steps 2017

Masked Man

capitol steps 2016

Die Fledermaus

Grinder's Stand

Babylon Revisited

John

Dracula's Grandmother

Mock the Vote-CSteps 2015

The Aliens

It Shoulda Been You

Cranwell's Capitol Steps

Kill Me Now

The Garden of Martyrs

Capitol Steps 2013

The Capitol Steps

Doubt

Four Dogs and a Bone

Zara Spook & Other Lures

Trial of F.D.R.

Autres Temp. . .

Real Desperate Housewives

Capitol Steps for 2011

Ludwig Live!

The Seagull

On The Verge

Seascape

Starcrossed

"Earnest" in Albany

Paris, 1890--Unlaced

BCC's A Christmas Carol

Sister's Christmas Catech

The Pajame Game

Her Name is Vincent

Property Known as Garland

12th Night

I Know I Came...Something

Doubt, a Parable

Voices' A Christmas Carol

Dickens A Christmas Carol

Marie Galante

Machinal

Capitol Steps

Late Nite Catechism

Rabbit Hole

Taming of The Shrew

Mystery of Irma Vep

I Love a Piano

The News in Revue

The Mikado

Saturday Night Liv

A Chorus Line

BCC - Christmas Carol

Morgan O-Yuki

Rent

Stageworks Hudson 2013/14

Tomorrow in the Battle

Stockholm

Looped

Play by Play Unchained

Stagework Hudson Archives

The Amish Project

The Divine Sister

Forbidden Broadway

Imagining Madoff

Or,

Play By Play Blue Moons

Play By Play Shadows

The Rivalry

Tennis in Nablus

Theater Barn 2017

Lucky Me

Guys and Dolls TB

Godspell-2012

Nunsense at TB

Christie's Spider's Web

A Comedy of Tenors

THEATER BARN ARCHIVES

A. Christie's The Hollow

The Addams Family

Agatha Christie's. .None

Altar Boyz

The Andrews Brothers

Better Late

Black Coffee

Boeing-Boeing

The Cocktail Hour

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

Don't Dress for Dinner

Don't Talk to the Actors

The Drowsy Chaperone

Evita

Forever Plaid

Forever Plaid-2016

The Full Monty

Funny Thing Happened

God of Carnage

Grease

Great American Trailer...

Gutenberg! The Musical

Half and Half

Hello Muddah, Hello Fadda

Housewives of Columbia

How the Other Half Loves

TBarn's I Love a Piano

I Love You....Now Change

It Had To Be You

John & Jen

Leading Ladies

Lies & Legends

The Little Dog Laughed

Moonlight and Magnolias

Five Course Love

Moon Over Buffalo

The Mousetrap

Murder at Howard Johnson

A Murder is Announced

The Musical of Musicals

Red, White and Tuna

Romance, Romance

Same Time, etc.

Fantasticks at the Barn

Spider's Web

Stones In His Pockets

The 39 Steps

They're Playing Our Song

Towards Zero

The Unexpected Guest

Veronica's Room

Visiting Mr. Green

The Wedding Singer

You Should Be So Lucky

Young Frankenstein

Zanna Don't!

Town Players--Pittsfield

Prodigal Cow

The Rocky Horror Show

Love, Loss & What I Wore

The Whale

Win/Lose/Draw

The Shape of Things

Five Women..Same Dress

Skin Deep

Stop Kiss

Life Is Short

Visual Arts

Walking the Dog Thtr 2014

The Umbilical Point

WALKING THE DOG: ARCHIVED

BecomingFrederickDouglass

Bon Appetit!

Cyrano

daemons

Eurydice

The Gospel of John

i take your hand in mine

Lost Frontier of America

Our Town

The Owl and the Pussycat

Painting Churches

Under Milk Wood

Vritue, Desire, etc.

Walking the dog's HAMLET

Who Am I This Time?

WAM Theatre Company

The Last Wife

emelieredux

The Bakelite Masterpiece

Special

Holy Laughter

In Darfur

Emilie

The Old Mezzo

Attic, Pearls & 3 Fine Gi

Melancholy Play

Weston Playhouse -2017

Long Day's Journey Into N

Buyer & Cellar

Music Man

Tenderly

Once

Weston Playhouse Archived

Weston's All My Sons

Analog and Vinyl

Baskervilles in Vermont

Weston's Chorus Line

Educating Rita

Ella

42nd Street

A Funny Thing...Forum

Fully Committed

Weston's Guys & Dolls

The Light in the Piazza

Les Miserables

Mamma Mia

Weston's La Mancha

Murder For Two

Next to Normal

No Child. . .

Weston's Other Place

Peter and the Starcatcher

Pregnancy Pact

Pump Boys and Dinettes

A Raisin in the Sun

Rent - Weston

Round & Round the Garden

Souvenir

25th Spelling Bee

Weston's Uncle Vanya

V&S&M&Spike

Williamstown Theatre 2017

Actually

A Legendary Romance

Moscow, Moscow, . . .

The Clean House

Where Storms are Born

5x10

The Roommate

The Model American

WTF ARCHIVED REVIEWS

A Doll's House

A Month in the Country

After the Revolution

An American Daughter

American Hero

And No More Shall We Part

Animal Crackers

The Atheist

Beyond Therapy

The Blue Deep

Broke-Ology

Caroline in Jersey

The Chinese Room

Children

Cost of Living

David Storey's "Home"

The Elephant Man

Far From Heaven

Fifth of July

A Flea in Her Ear

Fool For Love

Funny Thing/Forum

Funny Thing II

A Great Wilderness

Hapgood

Importance of/Earnest

An Intervention

It's Jewdy's Show

Johnny Baseball

WTF's June Moon

Kinship

Knickerbocker

The Last Goodbye

Legacy

Living On Love

Moon for the Misbegotten

Off the Main Road

The Old Man&The Old Moon

One Slight Hitch

Paradise Blue

Pygmalion

Quartermaine's Terms

Romance Novels for Dummie

The Rose Tattoo

Samuel J. and K.

She Loves Me

She Stoops To Conquer

Six Degrees of Separation

Streetcar Named Desire

Ten Cents a Dance

Three Hotels

Three Sisters

The Torch-Bearers

True West

Unknown Soldier

The Visit

What is..Cause of Thunder

WTF's Our Town

All My Sons, by ArthurMiller. Directed by Mary B. Robinson. Reviewed by J. Peter Bergman.

Shannon Marie Sullivan, Gabriel Vaughan, Molly Regan, Davy Raphaely, Christopher Kelly; photo: Hubert Schriebl
"We're like a railroad station waiting for a train to come in."

      Tentative people playing the all-too human game of "loving support" fill the neighborhood where Arthur Miller sets his 1947 play ALL MY SONS now on stage at the Weston Playhouse in Weston, Vermont. Chris Keller's parents, Joe and Kate, live in the house they've always lived in and their adult son lives at home with them, works in his father's factory and secretly dates Ann Deever, the girl who used to live next door, the girl who was engaged to his older brother who has died in world war II. His somewhat altruistic presence is an inspiration to his current neighbor, Doctor Jim Bayliss who longs to leave his active neighborhood practice and get into medical research which to his wife, Sue, would be a fatal mistake. The neighbors on the other side, Frank and Lydia Lubey, were high school sweethearts, now with three kids of their own. Everyone spend a lot of time with the Kellers, those nice people in the middle of the block. Even little children like to visit here, to play games with old Joe Keller, patriarch, perfect, pre-eminent.

       There's one little problem, though. In spite of their affirmed friendships, all of the neighbors know that Joe has a dirty little secret. They all "know" what they know, that Joe Keller let defective airplane parts leave his factory and that twenty-one fighting Americans lost their lives because of those cracked housings. They all "know" that Joe let his partner take the rap and stay in prison as a result of his own actions, or inactions. Everyone knows all of this, but no one wants to step out of the unseen "Greek Chorus" of a neighborhood and point an accusing finger.

       As in every Greek Tragedy of a play, there is one individual willing to make the big step, to point the finger and to call out the villain. This is Ann's brother George who comes to visit in the middle of a heat wave, to stop his sister from marrying into this family, to valiantly defend his own aging father whom he has only just visited for the first time in years. He is a highly moral man, a lawyer who has little faith in his own profession. He is a man on a moral mission who, ultimately, is distracted by the simplicity of grape juice, the warmth of old associations and the charm of the Kellers.

       This is my favorite Arthur Miller play, a much finer work than his acknowledged masterpiece "Death of a Salesman" which followed it onto Broadway two years later. "All My Sons" won the first TONY Award in 1946 and established Miller as a bright, up-and-coming playwright. It was the second of his early trilogy of plays where a major father-figure ends up dead, pointing perhaps to problems in the playwright's own family life. The difference between his first and third plays and this one in the middle is the rationale for death. Here it is the quiet admission of guilt and the inability to face his accusers and take one more moral stand over an issue that is clearly of his own making. Joe Keller understands what must be done in his case and he does it. This act, though saddening, lifts this tragedy into the stratosphere, makes it a morality play about mankind's ability to set things right in the end.

       David Wohl plays Joe with a darkly delicate charm. He shows us the good neighbor and good father and good husband who lives easily with the dirty secret that haunts his wife's sleep. His early scene with a local kid, Bert - beautifully played by Django Grace who's natural portrait of the boy would seem to set him on a career course as an actor - presents the perfect picture of the nice guy on the street, the best father-figure and neighbor imaginable. Wohl imbues Joe with a warmth and with an understanding of human nature that is absolute. It's a great performance, both for Wohl himself and for his character in that place in that time that Miller has given us.

        His son Chris is played with similar self-assurance by Davy Raphaely. His tenderness is never a deceptive one. He hates the secret he is hiding from his parents. He adores his life and the people in it and, as Raphaely presents him, Chris is ready for the fall from grace his family is about to take. In fact, it is through his actions that Joe follows his logical course of action. Raphaely has one of those faces that let's us see what his character feels even when his words are presenting a different picture. It's a marvelous performance of a young man maturing through circumstances and the acquiring of dangerous knowledge.

       Shannon Marie Sullivan is a lovely Ann Deever. It is easy to see why both Chris and his older brother would be attracted to her. Sullivan plays the role with clear intentions. She gives Ann a reality that has escaped other actresses, a deeper reality that, when she reveals the God moment - a letter from the dead son/fiance - comes as a complete surprise to the Kellers and to us. That we don't see it coming is due to Sullivan's portrayal of Ann, a woman who also harbors a secret, that knowledge which can destroy the human soul.

       Her brother George is very handily represented by Christopher Kelly. He is a late arrival and an early departee in the play and his impact is overwhelming. Kelly takes the role to a different place than usual and when Kate Keller goes after him to sway him away from his need for revenge and he falls under her spell again as she resorts to the tactic of childhood memory Kelly softens his George, turns him into a ten year old kid before our eyes. Kelly does this wonderfully. We can actually see this transition in him, not just hear it as we often do.

       I know I am doing nothing but praising, but this troupe of actors is doing a perfect job in this production. They are playing exactly what the author called for and not trying to "compensate" for the formal structure of the play. Too often I have seen this play taken apart and reconstructed in someone else's moral-minded creativity. Elizabeth Morton's Sue Bayliss, for example, has the correct verbal smarminess when she talks about Joe and Kate Keller. Piper Goodeve plays the outrageous simple faith in human nature that is written into Lydia Lubey. These two women are the polar opposites of reality that make this play so much the ultimate embodiment of traditional Greek melodrama.

       Gabriel Vaughan as Frank Lubey and Tim Rush as Jim Bayliss are the backup singers in this chorus of neighbors. Like his wife Frank is devoted to Kate Keller and to his now dead friend Larry Keller. He plays the need to believe in a good God who wouldn't take an innocent life with remarkable innocence and makes it work. Rush, on the other hand, is a constant picture of devotion to a wife who has knack of corrupting his dreams and wishes. With each successive scene we witness his destruction brick by brick through her anxiety and her understanding of unspoken truths. Both men turn in fine performances.

       It is the Kate Keller presented here by actress Molly Regan  who holds the play together. This woman, if she was a knitter, would be creating a wealth of woolen strands conforming to her own desires and work. Regan is a force of nature, really. She brings Kate alive in a way that is both repellent and controlling. It is hard, as she plays the matriarch, to escape her clutches; the others in the play are woven into the fabric she knits. At the same time it is apparent that she dislikes most of the people she knows and she cannot help but make them feel her arrogant distaste for them. It is more than just Kate's actions, packing her houseguests things for them without telling them for example, it is her tone, artificial when sweet, sour when more privately reactive, that really defines the woman and Regan has mastered that dichotomy perfect. Her vision of Kate Keller is the ideal that Miller has of motherhood, an ideal that is borne out in Linda in Miller's next play "Death of a Salesman." In a true ensemble there are no stars; in this ensemble one emerges after all and that is Molly Regan.

       Jason Simms simple set is fine for the play, but I disliked seeing people inside and outside the house being in the same place upstage right. Grier Coleman's costumes so rightly depict the period of the play and keep it from being in some undefined time - which I have seen in other productions. The lighting design created by Jiyoun Chang gives this play its definition as the actions of a single day, another vaguely Greek element of the Miller play. Music, sound and original music by Christopher Colucci work perfectly. The ubiquitous Ryan Winkles has staged the minimal fights very well indeed.

       Mary B. Robinson deserves our thanks for a flawless edition of "All My Sons." Her vision of the play and her handling of its cast allows us to see finally the play that Arthur Miller imagined and wrote. She is clearly an inciteful and masterful director for the theater and I hope she never goes away.

       Is it clear by now that this is a production no one who loves good theater should miss? If you have any doubt, let me say it again: do not miss this play. This is what great theater is all about.

◊08/28/16◊

Django Grace, David Wohl; photo: Hubert Schriebl
Piper Goodeve, Gabriel Vaughan; photo: Hubert Schriebl
Christopher Kelly, Shannon Marie Sullivan, Molly Regan; photo: Hubert Schriebl
All My Sons plays at the Weston Playhouse on the town green at 12 Park Street, Weston, Vermont through September 4. For tickets and information call the box office at 802-824-5288 or go on line at westonplayhouse.org.

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