American Players Theatre's critical kudos from national writers continued this week.Â
APT's "All My Sons" is naturalistic and straightforward, with "a pinch of understated imagination," writes Wall Street Journal critic Terry Teachout, whose glowing review of the Arthur Miller play published on Thursday.
As part of a "superior cast," Teachout writes, APT company members Sarah Day and Jonathan Smoots "outdo themselves" as Kate and Joe Keller, a Wisconsin couple struggling with the loss of their older son in World War II.
"What makes their performances so striking is the doubleness of character that they suggest," he writes. Smoots "plays Joe Keller, a factory-owning wartime profiteer whose corner-cutting, which led to the deaths of 21 U.S. pilots, is about to be unmasked.
"On the surface he's an ingratiating back-slapper, but scratch his good cheer and you'll find stark terror. Not so Kate (Ms. Day), his wife, whose grandmotherly exterior conceals a Medea-like hardness of soul that is nothing short of terrifying."
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In addition to "All My Sons," Teachout found "Dickens in America" "engaging" and said that director "Kate Buckley's 'Antony and Cleopatra' is one of the best I've seen, a seven-actor chamber adaptation in which everything peripheral to the central relationship between the title characters has been ruthlessly and creatively stripped away."
Read the rest of the reviews on the Wall Street Journal site. Earlier this week, we linked to other reviews of APT, which has attracted critics from Milwaukee and Chicago. Our review of "All My Sons" is posted on 77square.com.
Lindsay Christians | The Capital Times
Food editor and arts writer Lindsay Christians has been writing for the Cap Times since 2008. She created the food podcast The Corner Table and hosts Cooking with the Cap Times. Member, American Theatre Critics Association. She/hers.
