GREED AND POWER THREATEN ‘RUTHERFORD’ LEGACY

In the shadowy, generational storyline, that evolves over a period of days in Githa Sowerby’s “Rutherford and Son,” a 1912 parlor drama briskly directed by Mechelle Moe and now playing in its Chicago premiere at TimeLine Theatre, the domineering family patriarch, John Rutherford (a rugged and worthy Francis Guinan), and his three children live under the same Victorian roof and feed off the success of the Rutherford family glass business. Rutherford, the major employer, controls the tempo and the citizens of the region, and he has benefited greatly from both the control and the company prosperity.