July 2010 Theatre Review by Joe Stead
After the Fall
Forty-six years after taking its first bows, Arthur Miller's "After the Fall" still feels very experimental. It is an experiment in non-linear form to be sure. A complex maze of moral quandaries and unanswerable questions, perhaps this acclaimed 1964 work was the playwright's own psychoanalysis, a way of digging deep within himself and extracting his own truth. This ambitious and exhausting 3-hour drama is anything but light entertainment. Trenchant, thought-provoking and occasionally unsettling, it nonetheless represents a powerful American voice grappling with many of his own personal demons. And the smoldering performance by Eclipse Theatre Company will be revered by lovers of serious and sobering drama.
Miller's
work, never less than honest and soul-searching, also falls victim
at times to its own analytical probing. As the centerpiece of
this autobiographical synthesis, Nathaniel Swift keeps the play on a
steady course. His is an almost bland, generic presence;
vulnerable, flawed and undeniably human. Swift plays Quentin, a
lawyer who has quit his practice amidst an increasing and
overwhelming sense of despair. He sees his life as a series of
legal proofs moving toward of a verdict before and empty bench.
We meet an assortment of Quentin's friends and family and the various
people, women in particular, who have affected his life. He
explains his disconnect with those who have been close to him, but to
whom he fails to understand.
"Remember when there were good people and bad and it was easy to tell the difference?" Quentin asks. He explains his past alliances with the Communist party as a former dream of solidarity he's no longer sure of. "We only turned left because we thought the truth was there". His long-time friend, a law professor named Lou, has written a book that could open himself and others to the anti-Communist uprising in America.
The Red Scare, which Miller himself figured prominently in during the 1950's and which influenced his great play "The Crucible," was an example of governmental induced hysteria. A close friend, Mickey, has been subpoenaed to testify before the Congressional "witch hunt" tribunal and has vowed to name names. "A man's gotta take the rap for what he does," Mickey believes. "I never quite believed that people could be so easily disposed of," Quentin laments.
Quentin doesn't want to be known as a "Red Lawyer". He fears the potential fallout of standing with his friend in time of need and questions how to say that his interests are no longer the same as Lou's. "Everything suddenly has consequences," he realizes. Quentin is as indecisive in his love life as he is in politics. "I'm not very demonstrative, I guess" is his answer. His first wife Louise berates him for behaving as if she doesn't exist. "You have no conception of what a woman is," she charges. In fact, the one honest confession that he has shared with her, an innocent but unconsummated attraction to another woman, met with icy silence for months. Although he claims to be faithful to his wife, Quentin is hardly immune to the attention and interest of other women.
The
second act of the play deals almost entirely with Quentin's
ill-fated relationship with his second wife, a beautiful but child-like
superstar clearly modeled on Miller's own second marriage to Marilyn
Monroe. We see this wife, here known as Maggie, rise quickly
from a simple switchboard operator to an overnight phenomenon.
"She was a joke, a beautiful piece trying to take herself
seriously". Quentin is obsessed with her beauty and vows
to find the best way to love her.
Maggie, in her simple-minded but needy way, worships Quentin, and he hopes to be her salvation. But through their rocky and troubled relationship, he comes to find that Maggie needs more love than he has to give. Maggie ultimately becomes the victim of an unhealthy mix of liquor and barbiturates. We see a pattern of behavior, from his mother to Louise to Maggie. "I wanted to face the worst thing I could imagine - that I could not love". Will Quentin find whatever is missing in himself to love again after his first two disastrous turns at the bat?
Miller's abstract, existential paradox unfolds in a dream-like manner, with time changes and stream of consciousness, all indicative of Quentin's state of mind. Director Steve Scott orchestrates it all like a finely tuned concerto in this intimate and occasionally riveting Eclipse rendition. The juxtaposition of Julie Daley's angry and melancholy Louise and the sweetly needy Maggie (read Marilyn) of the lovely Nora Fiffer is particularly captivating. The two acts nearly feel like two different plays as Miller works out his complex psychosis in dramatic form. But Swift does strike some fire with Fiffer in particular. "After the Fall" is a fascinating psychological probe, as told to an invisible "listener". I know Miller considered it his finest work, and while I won't go quite that far, it is certainly his most personal.
Eclipse Theatre Company presents "After the Fall" through August 22, 2010 at the Greenhouse Theater second floor studio, 2257 N. Lincoln Avenue in Chicago. The show runs 3 hours with intermission. Performances are Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m., Sundays at 2:30 p.m. Tickets are $25 for all regular performances (half-price rush tickets available), with discounts for groups, students and seniors. For more information on this show, please visit the Theatre In Chicago After the Fall page.
About Joe Stead
Joe
Stead has enjoyed a lifelong passion for the theatre, which has
involved acting, directing, producing, designing and reviewing for
the past twenty-five years. He served as founder, producer and
Artistic Director of Curtain Up Productions in Baltimore, Maryland
and Four Star Players in Tampa, Florida. Favorite productions
have included "Life With Father," "Deathtrap,"
"The Odd Couple," "The Miracle Worker,"
"Brighton Beach Memoirs," "You're A Good Man, Charlie
Brown" and "Godspell". He has also performed
leading roles in "Fiddler on the Roof," "Pippin,"
"The Phantom of the Opera," "The Front Page," and
most recently as Hucklebee in "The Fantasticks" for
Waukegan Community Players. Joe holds a degree in Commercial
Art from Tampa Technical Institute. As a critic, he has
reviewed everything from Broadway to community theatre and major
regional theatres throughout the United States including the Kennedy
Center in Washington, D.C., Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey,
Goodspeed Opera House in Connecticut, and the Asolo Theatre in
Sarasota, Florida.
Since 1998, he has been a proud resident of Chicago, the greatest theatre city in America. He served for two years as Theatre Editor for College News and Central Newspapers. He created the website Steadstyle Chicago in 2000 to showcase the city's outstanding and diverse theatre scene. Joe was proud to serve alongside a distinguished panel of theatre professionals as a judge for two seasons of Speaking Ring Theatre's "Vitality" Festival of original short plays. His most fulfilling role, in addition to reviewer and all-around theatre fanatic, was as director of the 2007 production of Peter Shaffer's "Equus" at Actors Workshop (now Redtwist) Theatre, which was nominated for five Joseph Jefferson Award Citations and won for Best Actor (Peter Oyloe).