New Play in Manhattan

All My Sons (by Arthur Miller; produced by Harold Clurman, Elia Kazan & Walter Fried, in association with Herbert H. Harris) has a theatrical force that covers a multitude of sins. Playwright Miller (best known for his novel, Focus) tends to overload his plot and overheat his atmosphere. His writing is uneven, some of his main characters are sometimes unreal, and most of his minor characters are at all times unnecessary. But he combines enough purposefulness with enough power to make him the most interesting of Broadway's new serious playwrights--few of whom, unfortunately, are interesting at all.

The play examines Joe Keller, an airplane parts manufacturer. With two sons of his own in the war, Keller is guilty of having sent other men's sons to their deaths by shipping out defective cylinders. Worse still, he let his partner go to prison for it. Keller's flyer son, Larry, engaged to the jailed partner's daughter, has been missing in China for more than three years. His other son, the idealistic Chris, has come home, swallowed his father's protestations of innocence, and arranged to marry his missing brother's fiancee. But Chris's mother will not hear of it; she will not admit that Larry is dead. It becomes clear that she cannot admit it without recognizing the enormity (she has long known the truth) of her husband's misdeed. Eventually Chris, too, faces the truth. The old man, after agreeing to confess and go to prison, shoots himself.

This story is written with passion, but without soapbox oratory. It less reviles Profiteer Keller than it sternly reveals him: he has rationalized his guilt by telling himself that he acted like any "practical" American; he has sloughed off his responsibility to society by concentrating on his duty to his family. In Chris and his mother, too, tribal loyalties clash with human obligations.

All My Sons is social criticism, but in moral terms; it clearly insists on individual responsibility. It also attacks the mind wholly by way of the emotions. And with its unblushing penchant for theater--tense atmosphere, patly timed revelations and whopping climaxes--it is a compelling rather than an entirely convincing play. The production adds to the impact: Ed Begley as Keller, Beth Merrill as Keller's wife, and above all Arthur Kennedy as Keller's son, play with consistent force.

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