FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
BSC Press Director Charlie Siedenburg, 551-655-0968

BARRINGTON STAGE COMPANY presents
Arthur Miller’s Landmark American Drama
ALL MY SONS
July 19 – August 4
Starring Jeff McCarthy and Lizbeth Mackay
Directed by Julianne Boyd

(PITTSFIELD, MA)  Barrington Stage Company, the award-winning theatre in downtown Pittsfield, under the leadership of Artistic Director, Julianne Boyd, and Managing Director, Tristan Wilson, presents Arthur Miller’s landmark American drama All My Sons from July 19 through August 4 at the BSC Boyd-Quinson Mainstage (30 Union Street, Pittsfield).  Opening Night is Sunday, July 22 at 5pm.

Directed by Julianne Boyd, All My Sons stars Jeff McCarthy (BSC’s Sweeney Todd, Follies and Mack & Mabel) as Joe Keller, Lizbeth Mackay (BSC’s A View from the Roof) as Kate Keller, Josh Clayton (Chris Keller), Rebecca Brooksher (BSC’s Private Lives) as Ann Deever, Andy Nogasky (Frank Lubey), Pilar Witherspoon (Sue Bayliss), Emily Kunkel (Lydia Lubey), Peter Reardon (Dr. Jim Bayliss), Matthew Carlson (George Deever), and Andrew Gillman (Bert).

The design team includes David Barber (sets), Jennifer Moeller (costumes), Scott Pinkney (lights), and Will Pickins (sound).   Wendy Ouellete is production stage manager.

Set in post-World War II, Arthur Miller’s landmark drama examines the relationships between fathers and sons and the price of living the American Dream. An explosive secret threatens to tear the Keller family apart in this powerful play about the conflict between business ethics and taking responsibility for one’s actions.

The inspiration for the play came from a wartime anecdote Miller heard about a woman who had turned in her father for delivering defective equipment to the U.S. military.  From this Miller shaped a drama not about war, but about a topic he knew better: money.

All My Sons opened on Broadway at the Coronet Theatre on January 29, 1947.  The cast included Ed Begley as Joe Keller, Arthur Kennedy and subsequently John Forsythe as Chris Keller, and Karl Malden as George Deever.  Directed by Elia Kazan, it won the Tony Award and the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award as Best New Play and ran 328 performances. In 1948 a movie version was released with Edward G. Robinson and Burt Lancaster.  All My Sons established Miller as an important American playwright and his next three plays – Death of a Salesman, The Crucible, and A View from the Bridge – cemented his position as heir to Eugene O’Neill as one of America’s greatest playwrights.   

Jeff McCarthy (Joe Keller) At BSC: Julianne Boyd’s productions of Sweeney Todd, Follies and Mack & Mabel and a developmental reading of Kunstler. In New York: Urinetown, Chicago, The Pirate Queen, Sympathetic Magic, Side Show, Southern Comfort, Dream True, Beauty & the Beast, Smile, and Zorba. In Los Angeles: City of Angels, The Three Sisters, Search and Destroy, Les Miserables. Recent TV and Film: The Good Wife, Starting Out in the Evening, Law & Order(s), Star Trek(s), Love Monkey and Robo Cop, Consent. Jeff has played La Fenice in Venice, Italy, the amphitheaters of Greece as Agamemnon and Africa as Albert Schweitzer.

Lizbeth Mackay (Kate Keller) At BSC: A View from the Roof.  Broadway: Doubt, All My Sons, The Price, The Heiress, Abe Lincoln in Illinois, Death and the Maiden, Crimes of the Heart (Theatre World, Outer Circle Critics and Hollywood Drama-Logue Awards). Off Broadway: Sons of the Prophet, The Forest, Sea of Tranquility, Durang Durang, The Old Boy, Kate’s Diary. Regional: One Slight Hitch, The Clean House, Faith Healer, ‘night, Mother (Elliot Norton Award), The Heidi Chronicles, Toys in the Attic. Film: One True Thing, In and Out, Marvin’s Room, White Squall, Malcolm X.  Yale School of Drama, mom to Katie and John. Hometown:  Buffalo.

Julianne Boyd (Director) founded the Barrington Stage Company in January, 1995. Her directorial credits at BSC include this season’s Dr. Ruth, All the Way and last season’s critically acclaimed production of The Best of Enemies, Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2010), A Streetcar Named Desire (2009) and the 2005 production of Follies.  In 1997 she directed BSC’s smash hit production of Cabaret, which won six Boston Theatre Critics Awards and transferred to the Hasty Pudding Theatre in Cambridge for an extended run. Ms. Boyd conceived and directed the Broadway musical Eubie!, a show based on the music of Eubie Blake which starred Gregory Hines and garnered three Tony nominations. She also co-conceived and directed (with Joan Micklin Silver) the award-winning Off-Broadway musical revue A…My Name Is Alice (Outer Critics’ Award) and its sequel A…My Name Is Still Alice. She has also worked extensively in regional theatres, including the Old Globe Theatre, the McCarter Theatre, La Jolla Playhouse and Syracuse Stage. From 1992 to 1998 Ms. Boyd served as President of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers, the national union representing professional directors and choreographers in the U.S.

Arthur Miller (Playwright) Miller (1915-2005) was born in New York City and studied at the University of Michigan. His plays include The Man Who Had All The Luck (1944), All My Sons (1947), Death of a Salesman (1949), The Crucible (1953), A View from the Bridge and A Memory of Two Mondays (1955), After the Fall (1964), Incident at Vichy (1964), The Price (1968), The Creation of the World and other Business (1972), The Archbishop’s Ceiling (1977), The American Clock (1980) and Playing for Time. Later plays include The Ride Down Mt. Morgan (1991), The Last Yankee (1993), Broken Glass (1994), Mr. Peter’s Connections (1998), Resurrection Blues (2002), and Finishing the Picture (2004). Other works include Focus, a novel (1945), The Misfits, a screenplay (1960), and the texts for In Russia (1969), In the Country (1977), and Chinese Encounters (1979), three books in collaboration with his wife, photographer Inge Morath. Memoirs include Salesman in Beijing (1984), and Timebends, an autobiography (1988). Short fiction includes the collection I Don’t Need You Anymore (1967), the novella, Homely Girl, a Life (1995) and Presence: Stories (2007).  He twice won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, received two Emmy awards and three Tony Awards for his plays, as well as a Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement. He also won an Obie award, a BBC Best Play Award, the George Foster Peabody Award, a Gold Medal for Drama from the National Institute of Arts and Letters, the Literary Lion Award from the New York Public Library, the John F. Kennedy Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Algur Meadows Award.  He received honorary degrees from Oxford University and Harvard University and was awarded the Prix Moliere of the French theatre, the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Lifetime Achievement Award and the Pulitzer Prize.

Barrington Stage Company’s Boyd-Quinson Mainstage is located at 30 Union Street in Pittsfield.   Tickets are $15-$60.  Senior tickets are $38, all matinee performances.  Youth 18 and under tickets are $15 to all performances except Saturday evening.  Performances are Tuesday and Wednesday at 7pm, Thursday-Saturday at 8pm, Wednesday and Friday matinees at 2pm (excluding July 20), Sunday at 5pm.   Call the BSC Box Office 413-236-8888 or purchase online at www.barringtonstageco.org.

ALL MY SONS SPECIAL EVENTS – FREE

July 24. Post-Show Discussion: ALL MY SONS. Boyd-Quinson Mainstage, 30 Union Street, Pittsfield. Following the Tuesday 7pm performance.

July 29. CONVERSATIONS WITH… Materialism, Socialism and Paternal Conflict in Arthur Miller’s All My Sons with Dr. Susan C. W. Abbotson. FREE. Sunday at 3:30pm. Ferrin Gallery, 437 North Street, Pittsfield. Written and set in the 1940s, All My Sons, with its tale of a family torn apart, exhibits many of the discordances that arose within the American family during this traumatic period of war and recovery. Social changes of the era, especially, affected the relationship between father and child, which is tellingly portrayed in Miller’s tale of the Kellers. Free but reservations recommended.

About Barrington Stage Company
Barrington Stage Company, a professional award-winning Equity regional theatre located in the heart of the Berkshires, in Pittsfield, MA, was co-founded in 1995 by Artistic Director Julianne Boyd. Barrington Stage’s mission is three-fold: to present top-notch, compelling work; to develop new plays and musicals; and to find fresh, bold ways to bringing new audiences into the theatre—especially young people. Barrington Stage garnered national attention in 2004 when it workshopped, and premiered William Finn and Rachel Sheinkin’s musical hit The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, which later transferred to Broadway’s Circle-in-the-Square Theatre where it won two Tony Awards and played more than 1,000 performances. In 2009/2010 Barrington Stage produced the world premiere of Mark St. Germain’s Freud’s Last Session, which later moved Off-Broadway to the Marjorie S. Deane Little Theater and then to New World Stages and has played more than 700 performances. Barrington Stage was voted “Best Live Theatre” by The Berkshire Eagle readers in 2011 and 2012 and was named “Best Theatre Company” in Metroland’s Best of the Capital Region 2009-2011.

 

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