ALL MY SONS hit me like a sledgehammer. LYRIC STAGE BOSTON has kicked off its fall season with a shattering production of Arthur Miller’s classic about family, personal success, and communal responsibility. An exceptional ensemble brings it home which is exactly where Miller wanted it to go–straight to the heart of America 1947, as it emerged, shell-shocked from WWII, propelled by the American dream– but at what price?

Bill Mootos & Julian Hirshfield/Photo: Benjamin Rose

The plot is based on a true story reported during the war, about an American corporation which conspired to ship out defective airplane engines to meet demand. It led to the deaths of 21 pilots. That number is retained in the play which begins in shadowy tableau: Joe Keller (a remarkable Bill Mootos) stands watching the boy next door (Julian Hirshfield) flying a toy airplane around the back yard. This poignant, idealized, and prescient opening scene lit by Karen Perlow not only points to the implications of the play’s title, but also the shadow hanging over the Keller family.

The scene transitions smoothly to Joe reading the newspaper on a sunny Sunday morning, almost untroubled by the giant symbolic apple tree–a memorial to the Keller’s son Larry a pilot MIA in the war–which has been toppled by an overnight storm. The next 24 hours will see Joe’s world come crashing down along with the lies and illusions about his complicity in a crime. It’s no accident Joe’s last name “Keller”– but for a single vowel– identifies his transgression.

Josephine Moshiri Elwood & Mark Souza /Photo: Benjamin Rose

At the start, director Scott Edmiston eases us gingerly into the surface calm of this average, white, middle of the last century, middle class family. But composer Oleg Smirnov’s sound design lets us know that the landscape below Janie E. Howland’s homey set teeters atop a murky moral sinkhole below. In Miller’s meticulously constructed play, and under Edmiston’s steady hand, things continue to cave when Ann Dever (Josephine Moshiri Elwood), Larry’s onetime girlfriend, arrives at the Keller home to accept a proposal from Larry’s brother Chris Keller (a heartbreaking Mark Souza). They hide their intentions from mother Kate Keller (Laura Marie Duncan) who clings to the hope that her son Larry will come back. At the root of this complicated scenario is what happened between Ann’s father Steve and Joe. They were partners at their factory which shipped out cracked cylinder heads during the war– which led to the deaths of 21 pilots. Steve remains in prison, while Joe was legally exonerated and continues to maintain his innocence.

Laura Marie Duncan/Photo: Benjamin Rose

This excellent cast is carrying a huge emotional/psychological load which grows heavier scene by scene. Bill Mootos’s Joe Keller conveys the rigid calm of a man hiding the truth from the world and himself. His eventual implosion is gut-wrenching. Laura Marie Duncan’s rich performance as Joe’s wife Kate is a standout. “It can’t be true,” she cries, that their son is dead–or she must face the truth of Joe’s role in his death. Allison Beauregard is also notable as toxic neighbor Sue Bayliss who pokes at the truth and represents the larger community which understands what’s unspoken and resents the Keller’s success and duplicity.

Bill Mootos and Mark Souza /Photo: Benjamin Rose

There’s nothing subtle about ALL MY SONS, an early success which earned Miller a Tony in 1947 for BEST AUTHOR. There are symbols galore in Miller’s classic, a generational tragedy about the sins of the father visited upon the son, heightened by timely details to make a timeless point about truth and illusion, individual success and social responsibility. Son Chris Keller makes this explicit: “…there’s a universe of people outside and you’re responsible to it.”  A climactic visit from Ann’s Brother George (Quinton Kappel) triggers the final descent, when, in the play’s final tragic moments, a last minute revelatory letter from Larry suddenly appears, and leads to the unequivocal moral of the story, spoken by the father himself:

“Sure, he was my son. But I think to him they were all my sons. And I guess they were, I guess they were.”

Despite the play’s heavy hand, Lyric Stage Boston’s production is delivered with such a sure hand, it rings true and powerful now. In his autobiography Miller wrote that “writing a worthy play was the most important thing a human being could do.” In a time when illusion and truth are increasingly interchangeable, accountability is elusive, and our connection to each other is fraught, let yourself be shaken to the core by ALL MY SONS– and daughters too. Now EXTENDED THROUGH 10/25 and a BOSTON THEATER CRITICS’ PICK!