Michael Gaston hasn’t had an easy month. He’s been rehearsing the emotionally wrenching role of Joe Keller in Arthur Miller’s “All My Sons,” which begins performances April 11 at Hartford Stage. He’s also been driving to the New York City borough of Queens right after rehearsals in Hartford to film his scenes for the new action-packed Marvel Cinematic Universe series “Daredevil: Born Again.”
Filming on “Daredevil” had been delayed by last year’s writer’s strike. The theater and the TV producers were able to negotiate a schedule in which Gaston could honor both obligations. Switching his mindset daily from a 1940s family tragedy to a superhero action adventure hasn’t been easy, but the pressure is worth it, he said.
When asked months ago by his agent if there were any parts he’d always wanted to play, the only one that he mentioned was Joe Keller in “All My Sons.” “Half a year later, I got a call,” Gaston said.
Melia Bensussen, who’s directing “All My Sons” for Hartford Stage, said she heard about Gaston’s desire to play Joe from a casting director she was working with. She had already been in discussions with film and stage star Marsha Mason about what she’d like to do next at Hartford Stage. Mason plays Joe’s wife Kate, a complex role in which she must balance grief, hope, love and willful denial.
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Joe Keller is just as complicated a character, a family man and successful businessman whose company was found to have manufactured defective airplane parts during World War II. His own son was a pilot who went missing during the war and is presumed dead. A close friend and work colleague of Joe’s, Steve Deever, has been imprisoned for selling the defective parts to the Air Force. Not only is Keller’s involvement in the crime greater than he has let on, the fallout from the incident has created rifts throughout the Keller and Deever families.
Gaston called the play “a monster. It’s about destructive forces at work. It explores the ethical issues of profiting off of war.”
Gaston hasn’t trod a Connecticut stage since the early 1990s, when he appeared in Miller’s adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s “An Enemy of the People” in 1992, and in the national tour of Neil Simon’s “Lost in Yonkers” in 1993.
His TV and movie work is prodigious, with 126 acting credits listed on his IMDB page. Gaston appeared in episodes of some of the greatest and quirkiest TV series of the last few decades, from “The Adventures of Pete & Pete” to “Ally McBeal” to “The West Wing” to “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.” Among his top experiences, he mentioned “The Leftovers,” “Mad Men” and that “I am still thrilled that I am the first guy they beat the shit out of on ‘The Sopranos.’”
Ben Katz, a New York-based actor who grew up in Massachusetts, plays Joe’s son Chris, an idealistic young war veteran whose devout respect for his father shifts drastically during the course of the play. He said staging “All My Sons” in the 21st century comes with special challenges, since it takes place “at a time when it was felt that the U.S. had saved democracy. The identity of honorable military service may have changed. It’s 1947, pre-James Dean.”
Chris gets some of the best lines in any Miller play, yelling at his father “Don’t you have a country? Don’t you live in the world?” Katz agreed that “this is one of the great American parts. The arguments are so well calibrated. It’s constructed really well. Every time Joe settles on a truth, Chris says something that unsettles him.”
At the same time, the situation that sets “All My Sons” in motion brings to mind the current headlines about the Boeing aircraft company and the ever-present economic realities of balancing profitability with safety and ethical concerns.
“All My Sons” also plays differently to different generations, Katz said. “Melia has tried to assert that it’s a different play for different ages. Chris can’t accept things you accept in later life.”
“All My Sons” is the second Miller play being done at a major regional theater in Connecticut this year, following Long Wharf’s waterfront staging of “A View from the Bridge” in February. Miller was a longtime Connecticut resident whose writing studio in Roxbury has been the subject of an historical preservation effort.
Gaston remembered meeting Miller on the set of the film version of the playwright’s witchcraft trial drama “The Crucible,” in which the actor played Marshal Herrick. “I have a lovely photo his wife took of me,” Gaston said.
Gaston, Katz and Bensussen describe the scenic design of Hartford Stage’s “All My Sons” (by Riw Rakkulchon, whose previous design for Hartford Stage was “The Mousetrap”) as “traditional” and “realistic.” “It’s very old school,” Gaston said. To Bensussen, “it looks like a realistic set, but it’s also basically an empty space. It’s like Greek theater, and a thrust stage lends itself to that.”
Bensussen, the artistic director of Hartford Stage since 2019, has regularly programmed work by great American playwrights, particularly those with Connecticut connections. She directed “Ah, Wilderness!” by Eugene O’Neill (who grew up in New London) in 2021 and put “Two Trains Running” by August Wilson (who worked on most of his plays at the O’Neill Center in Waterford and premiered many of them at the Yale Rep) on the schedule for next season.
“Whenever we do any play, we always ask ‘Why this play now?,’” she said. “With this one, it’s the theme of civic engagement. It’s about where responsibility lies, literally in our own backyard.”
She said few cuts had to be made in the nearly 80-year-old script, though a reference to “kissing booths” on Labor Day required some research and context.
“We did a reading to see if it worked and were stunned by how it grabs you and doesn’t let you go,” Bensussen said. “It’s got hope and aspiration at its core. It’s not a question of who wins an argument. The whole play gets elevated to a certain pitch, but does not get overwrought.
“It’s a high wire act,” Bensussen added. “We’re watching people wrestle with the great questions that plague us as humans.
“All My Sons” by Arthur Miller, directed by Melia Bensussen, runs April 11 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 no 2 p.m. performance on April 13, no performance on April 23 and a 2 p.m. matinee instead of an evening performance on May 1. $20-$100. hartfordstage.org/all-my-sons.
