The sins of the father

It would have been ballsy for Nevada Conservatory Theatre to have Arthur Miller's All My Sons five or six years ago. The dirty secret at the center of Miller's 1947 tragedy is war profiteering. A half-dozen years back, we were at the height of a falsely premised war in which brave men and women were endangered and exploited by war profiteers back home. Worse yet, our leaders not only winked at this heinous practice, they enabled it.

All My Sons director Tom Markus draws an explicit parallel between Miller's post-World War II drama and the Bush administration -- among other recent calamities -- in a passionate preface to NCT's program. But a revival of Miller's excoriation of collective guilt ("Half the goddamn country is gotta go [to jail] if I go," cries the play's protagonist) seems too little, too late.

Or do our consciences need pricking? "You play cards with a man you know he can't be a murderer," says Joe Keller (Steve Rapella), the profiteer in question ... who appears to have beaten the rap when we meet him. (Right, and you vote for president based on whom you'd rather have over for beer.) All My Sons was Miller's second try at Broadway, his debut effort having run an ignominious four performances. Sons was make-or-break for Miller. (Suffice it to say Miller wasn't broken, and his next play would be a modest confection called Death of a Salesman.)

Markus's forceful populist argument on behalf of Miller's continued relevance is at odds with the style of his production, which might be called Museum-Piece Theater. If one left at intermission (Act II and III are played without break), the overriding impression would be of a well-crafted but not especially consequential period artifact. Markus raises the emotional temperature considerably in the remaining acts, but the ambling, pastoral mode of the opening frame fails to establish the necessary undercurrent of dread.

In an unnamed Ohio town, on a seemingly ordinary late-summer day, the ghosts of Joe's criminal past are closing in upon him. A tree planted in honor of Keller's son, Larry, MIA since his plane went down off China in 1944, has blown down in the night. Kate Keller (Susan Lowe), Joe's wife, is additionally perturbed by the arrival of Larry's fiancée, Ann Deever (Savannah Smith). For Kate, Larry is still alive, but Ann believes otherwise and has come to make a new start with Joe's surviving son, Chris (Brooks Asher).

Ann's father also happens to be Joe's former business partner, who's doing hard time for knowingly selling defective parts to the government, causing the death of 21 pilots. Joe has been exonerated of responsibility, but Ann's brother George (Ryan Fonville) is en route to the Keller household, bearing news that may portray Joe in a very different light.

Ashleigh Poteat's period-perfect costumes put us right into postwar Middle America, as does Heather Caliguire's meticulously detailed set. The two-story façade of the Keller house towers over a lawn that extends onto the forestage, putting the action in the audience's lap. The Keller's domicile sits in a black void, metaphorical of a family -- and, by extension, an America -- that's living in denial.

Although some of the supporting players seem to think they're doing musical comedy, the detailed work of leads Rapella and Lowe grounds the theater's production in deep, naturalistic roots. Miller envisioned a cross-pollination of realistic drama and Greek tragedy, and Joe Keller achieves tragic stature in Rapella's secure hands. The actor not only sets a pace that keeps the rest of the cast on its toes, he effortlessly portrays a man who grew up fast and rough, parlaying street smarts and a year of night school into becoming a homespun industrialist. Before our eyes, he evolves from an unprepossessing, avuncular man into a raging, dispossessed monarch.

Outwardly deferential, like any "good wife" of the period, Kate Keller is the power behind Joe's lawn chair throne. Her covertly domineering hand is never overplayed by Lowe, who wreaths Kate's passive-aggressive hostility (particularly toward Ann) in charm and faux-helplessness.

Confronted with these powerhouses, Savannah Smith's sultry-toned Ann more than holds her own. For all her breezy assurance, Smith's eyes and voice betray the deep reservoirs of pain behind Ann's brave front. She practically steamrolls Chris because Brooks Asher's bland performance has all the sturdiness of damp cardboard.

Fonville's mid-play arrival puts a jolt of electricity into the show. A tightly wound knot of anger and betrayal, he lights the fuse that builds to an ultimately cathartic climax. Attention must also be paid to little Benjamin Blomquist (as Bert). The cowboy-hatted youngster's delightfully unselfconscious performance enlivens Act I with needed bursts of energy. For while Nevada Conservatory Theatre's All My Sons does much well, it's just not quite enough.