A Classic Case of Image-Busting

For a theater as for an actor, there is such a thing as typecasting. True, a reputation for producing a particular type, or types, of drama helps an institution create an artistic identity. But it can also lead people to assume that’s all it can do.

Take the case of South Coast Repertory. The 36-year-old Costa Mesa venue has been widely lauded for its success in cultivating new scripts. In addition to the many works it develops, more than 65 plays have taken their first bows at this Orange County venue, including such recent successes as “Wit” by Margaret Edson (currently at the Geffen Playhouse), “Collected Stories” by Donald Margulies and “Three Days of Rain” by Richard Greenberg.

Less known is that SCR is also one of the best Shaw theaters around. Not only is it one of the few Southland houses that stage the venerable Irishman’s work on a regular basis, but it’s also done with a rare intelligence and craftsmanship.

But SCR as a home to the American canon? That’s not how people usually think of it. Yet SCR, now in the fourth season of its American Classics series, has made it something of a mission to bring the great American plays not only to its regular audience but to young theatergoers as well. The series continues with Arthur Miller’s “All My Sons,” which opens Friday, directed by Martin Benson.

The common denominator, and arguably the key to the theater’s track record, is a respect for the text. “We’re very much a theater of literature,” explains Benson, who co-founded the theater in 1964 with David Emmes, with whom he continues to share artistic director duties. “Every theater carves out its own niche, of course, and ours is largely new plays. But we do have great respect for the classics, and there’s no greater treat for a director to do a new play and then a classic and then a new play again. You learn from each one. The new play confirms the classic, and the classic confirms the new play. It’s really an invigorating thing.”

Still, the American Classics series was launched not just for the benefit of the theater’s artists and audiences, but also to address what Benson and Emmes recognized as a need in the community. Operating in concert with SCR’s Theater Discovery Project, students may purchase $10 tickets to selected performances and are provided with supplementary materials to complement the experience.

“With the cutbacks in funding for the schools, students aren’t exposed to dramatic literature,” says Benson, in his office. It is filled with theater memorabilia, and as he sits in front of a window that overlooks SCR’s entry plaza, a few well-manicured palm trees blow in the breeze. “We decided, well, why not develop a series and reacquaint not only our audiences but ourselves with the great American classics. And so we set that in motion, and it’s been very satisfying.”

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What makes SCR’s American Classics series different is that it resists the current fashion of staging a classic as a star vehicle. “Now, would there have been a revival of ‘Death of a Salesman’ if it wasn’t for Brian Dennehy?” says Benson, referring to the recent Broadway success. “I would say probably not. Would there have been a revival, for that matter, of ‘The Iceman Cometh’ if it wasn’t for Kevin Spacey?

“If you put a star in something like that, then it becomes an event. If you bring somebody in who has a name, you’re following the Roundabout formula, where you do a classic play, but you people it with people whose names are going to draw an audience,” he says, referring to the practice at the New York theater. “But in a sense, if you have to have a name to sell a play, then you’re not really trusting the play.”

As far as SCR is concerned, the text is chosen first, and everything else follows. Consequently, when it came time to pick the next classic to be staged, Benson thought first in terms of playwrights, including Miller. Benson has directed nearly one-third of the productions seen on SCR stages over the years, including Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” in 1969 and 1997, as well as “The Crucible” in 1988.

Yet “All My Sons,” which premiered in 1947 and was Miller’s first major play, had never really attracted him. “It’s a play I’ve passed over in the past,” Benson admits. “It was a well-made play, but it seemed just a little too contrived, so I’d always go on to something else.”

The drama focuses on a manufacturer, Joe Keller (Peter Michael Goetz), who has sold defective airplane parts to the government during World War II. His position in the community is challenged when his secrets begin to come out, just as his son Chris (Simon Billig) is preparing to wed. The patriarch is forced to confront his culpability for the death of many pilots, acknowledging “they were all my sons.”

Eventually, Benson decided to give the drama another chance. “As part of the American Classics series, we needed to come up with another play, so I thought I’d take another look,” he says. “But this time, instead of doing a careful reading--I was in a hurry or something--I read it rapidly. And all of the melodramatic aspects disappeared in the sweep of it and I saw how complex the characters really were. It’s a play that’s easy to miss on your first reading.”

The play’s moral themes certainly contribute to Miller’s reputation as an American Ibsen. “It’s very Ibsen-esque in that an action, long before the play has begun, has really set off what will happen out of it,” says Benson. “And secondly, there is a logical basis for each movement within the play, which is also something that Ibsen did throughout his work.”

Yet those qualities aren’t necessarily what Benson looks for when choosing a work to direct. “What I tend to admire most is complexity, where you’re thrown off base all the time and going to someplace else where you thought you wouldn’t go,” he explains. “But in Miller’s play, it always seemed so straight-ahead to me. But then I saw that as the virtue that he really intended it to be.

“ ‘All My Sons’ starts out with everything seeming to be fine in a way, and gradually little pieces fall out that give you the suggestion that things aren’t as idyllic in this backyard as one was led to believe initially,” he says. “You’ve just got to play it so it has the flow and the ease of a hot summer afternoon in a backyard, with seemingly no shadows showing initially. The staging is far more subtle than the dialogue on the page as you read it. The dialogue and action can seemingly flow together without planting signals all over the place.”

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Paying that kind of attention to the play as literature--and creating a staging to complement a particular script’s attributes--has long been a hallmark of SCR work. And Benson and Emmes have stuck to their guns, even when theater trends have suggested otherwise.

“There was a time in the ‘70s when people weren’t writing plays,” Benson recalls. “It was all about happenings and events and multimedia. We did some of it, but we weren’t really comfortable. It wasn’t what we were about. We need to have the text and go from there.”

Then too, SCR must have a cast that will share its commitment to the play. “We want to try and create a production that’s really going to be effective, where you can go into rehearsal eight hours a day and know you’re going to have the same people day after day to work with,” Benson says. “We don’t just want to be the corps de ballet to the star performance.”

Casting name-brand stars “has never been the SCR way, ever, anyway,” he says. “Since our earliest days, we very much rely on our own resources, and they are the actors with whom we mostly work and who will really make a commitment to doing the play.”

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“ALL MY SONS,” South Coast Repertory, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Dates: Plays Tuesdays to Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays 2:30 and 8 p.m.; Sundays 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Ends April 1. Prices: $28 to $47. Phone: (714) 708-5555.