David Edgar’s new play certainly bears an intriguing premise, examining the clash of beliefs between two of twentieth-century America’s leading lights, namely playwright Arthur Miller and his close friend, director Elia Kazan.
OUR VERDICT
As the drama opens on Simon Kenny’s spartan yet stylish stage, it’s the early Sixties and Miller and Kazan are meeting al fresco in New York to discuss a potential new play, their relationship clearly edgy and uncomfortable.
With bold lettering beamed onto the walls to cue a subsequent throwback to the year 1952 (a simple, effective device) we then see the pair, Miller now ‘Art’ and Kazan ‘Gadg’( in homage to his natural handiness) far closer, clearly two good friends.
Kazan had directed Miller’s seminal plays All My Sons and Death of a Salesman in the late Forties and the two men seemed inseparable, almost ‘brothers’ as the play dubs them. Both are highly gifted men of the theatre, both have indulged in extramarital affairs.
Each has been involved with a character initially introduced as Miss Bauer who evolves into the screen goddess Marilyn Monroe. Jasmine Blackborow has the thankless task of embodying Monroe, and whilst she is a confident presence, weaving her way through both men’s reflections, she crucially misses the star’s quintessential vulnerability.
Sadly profound political, or more accurately, moral, differences drove a wedge between Miller and Kazan as Edgar’s play explores, the title often invoked to underline the schism in American politics, then and also perhaps now.
The infamous McCarthy witch-hunts of the Fifties stymied many promising careers in Hollywood and beyond and when approached to give testimony to the Committee, Kazan, a former Communist Party member, decided to name names, an expedient move that Miller, four years later, refused to emulate, receiving a suspended prison sentence for his actions.
But people of course are rarely simply good or bad as the play makes palpably clear.
Kazan here has a likeability, an eloquence that can distract from his actions and Miller is not always as nobly motivated as he may first appear.
Shaun Evans and Michael Aloni (making his UK stage debut) are generally excellent, each giving thoughtful, nuanced performances.
Aloni in particular captures much of the young Miller’s fervour and his indignation at Kazan’s decision to prioritise his career.
It’s a decision supported by Day, Kazan’s intelligent, incisive wife who we first see enjoying the new boardgame of Scrabble, the word ‘info’ morphing into ‘informer,’ presaging the play’s central theme.
What is rather frustrating is that sometimes, despite its intelligent script, persuasive performances and James Dacre’s strong direction, the play seems a tad static, a statement of facts already well-known rather than a truly engrossing drama. Happily though Edgar’s finale belies this, being both punchy and memorable.
After ten years estrangement during which Miller has written The Crucible about seventeenth-century paranoia and Kazan directed the vindicatory film On the Waterfront, Miller initiates a rapprochement, hoping his erstwhile friend will direct After the Fall. As the two men warily converse Miller concludes that, ultimately, after all the rhetoric subsides, life comes down to one simple yet unequivocal principle.
Fundamentally a man must do “what’s right, not what feels right for you at the time.”
Orange Tree Theatre
1 Clarence Street, Richmond, TW9 2SA
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