19

SUNDAY

If only the employees of BF Goodrich had seen Arthur Miller’s All My Sons. The story of young sweethearts whose fathers were business partners during World War II is, on one level, a family drama; on another, it’s an indictment of least-cost contracting. As the play opens, the girl’s father is in jail for spot-welding over cracks in cylinder heads, causing 21 planes to crash; the boy now works in the same profitable plant with his own father. Twenty years after the premiere of All My Sons, BF Goodrich won a contract to make brakes for the Air Force. Despite failures throughout the manufacturing process, the brakes were installed in test planes before the company’s deceptions were discovered. In both cases, personal and moral responsibility was abdicated, in the hope that someone else would fix the defects before any real harm was done. Read the case study in B-school or see the Quotidian Theatre Company’s production at 2 p.m. (to July 10; see City List for other dates) at the Writer’s Center, 4508 Walsh St., Bethesda. $18. (301) 816-1023.