Playwright: Robert Anderson
At: Steppenwolf Theatre Company,
1650 N. Halsted St.
Phone: (312) 335-1650; $38-$60
Runs through: June 20
At one time, a man's duty toward his family was to work long hours without complaint, and his family's duty was to be grateful that he did. And if the Head Of Household expected deference from those dependent on him—well, it behooved them to grant it. Tom Garrison, driven by childhood memories of Depression-era penury and a shiftless father, has taken that dynamic to extremes, lavishing material riches on his wife and children, while starving them of his attention and affection. Or perhaps that's just how HIS son, Gene—the one telling us the story—remembers it.
Wherever the truth lies, the personalities in Robert Anderson's play—selfless Mom, severe Dad, pushy Big Sis—risk coming off as caricatures, as in most testimonies inextricably linked to a single emotion-fueled and nostalgia-blurred point of view. For all his grumbling about his progenitor's propensity for recounting his climb from poverty to prosperity, Gene's account of the events surrounding Mrs. Garrison's death is not dissimilar in motive or content. And since the young son, to compensate for his sire's spiritual stinginess, assumed many of the more companionable husbandly chores—dancing with his mother at parties, for example—is it any surprise that the Oedipal tensions should also escalate with the loss of that saintly woman?
At its roots, I Never Sang For My Father is a hankie-wringer for men (this is the author who gave us the soggy Tea And Sympathy, after all). Under Anna D. Shapiro's intelligent direction, however, a cast dominated by Steppenwolf alumni contribute performances of uncommon restraint.
John Mahoney delivers as three-dimensional a portrait as could be wished of a jealous patriarch angered by his offspring's enjoyment of the privileges engendered by his labor, while Kevin Anderson deftly sidesteps all traces of whining self-pity in conveying Gene's longing for escape from his guilt-riddled past. Deanna Dunagan redeems Anderson's idealized portrait of Garrison materfamilias, but Martha Lavey, her voice as strident as a bugle call, fares less well as the embittered daughter. But whether viewed as simple intergenerational conflict à la Eugene O'Neill or a social study of changing family values, the results make for an evening of riveting drama.