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| Sunday, 20 February 2005 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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Arthur Miller : Distinctly American icon by Elysa Gardner His plays were among the most widely read, produced and loved of the past century: Death of a Salesman, A View from the Bridge, The Crucible, All My Sons, to name a few. Many considered 89-year-old Arthur Miller the USA's greatest living dramatist.
"Probably not a day goes by that, somewhere in the world, one of Miller's plays isn't being performed," Robert Falls says. As artistic director of Chicago's Goodman Theatre, Falls oversaw both the acclaimed 1999 Broadway revival of Salesman and the playwright's most recent work, last year's Finishing the Picture, which drew on his brief marriage to Marilyn Monroe (for whom Miller wrote the 1961 film The Misfits). "It's as though a major planet has been removed from the sky," says actor Brian Dennehy, who played Miller's most famous tragic character, Willy Loman, in the revival of Salesman and will reprise the role in London in May. Miller's plays are avidly produced abroad, and they also have enjoyed success in places as far-reaching as China, where the writer directed his own work. Roundabout Theatre Company artistic director Todd Haimes, who has revived Miller's plays numerous times, says, "Miller wrote plays that everyone, whatever their stature or educational background, could relate to." Michael Mayer, who directed the Roundabout's Broadway revival of Miller's 1964 play After the Fall last year and an earlier restaging of Bridge, describes Miller as "our (generation's) Ibsen, our great moralist. His revolutionary spirit has been overlooked a lot. He got this reputation in the '70s for being kind of middle-of-the-road. But what he did with his plays was really bold. He was breaking new ground all the time." Adds Scott Ellis, another Broadway veteran who directed a 2002 revival of Miller's first produced play, The Man Who Had All the Luck, and is developing a film version with a screenplay by Miller's daughter Rebecca: "He loved actors and loved the process. He was just so vibrant and full of life." Dennehy also describes Miller in his later years as "a man with a tremendous appetite for life. He was a master carpenter, a furniture maker; (he) painted and just had a great sense of humour." Miller was married three times, most famously to Monroe, but most enduringly to photographer Inge Morath, his wife and sometime creative partner for 40 years, until her death in 2002. The playwright remained just as active intellectually, writing, speaking and sharing his views on political matters with friends and colleagues. Miller's creative spirit never flagged. He told Mayer just a few months ago that "he had a new idea he was really excited to get started on." Dennehy, who spoke to Miller last week, also had believed that he was far from through. "The hallmark of a great artist is to be able to offer a shared experience," Dennehy says. "And I can't think of anyone who achieved that better than Arthur Miller." Says August Wilson, another great American playwright: "We've all been in those places (Miller's) characters have been in. It's always sad when a door closes on an artist, particularly one who has given so many people such a great understanding of our humanity." Courtesy: USA Today |
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Miller, who died Thursday, was much more than that, though. To the end,
he remained a tireless thinker and writer of all forms, churning out books,
stories, essays and articles that, like his plays, probed the moral
conscience of his country. And the sobering humanism that this distinctly
American icon applied to issues ranging from anti-Semitism and McCarthyism
to his personal demons touched fans everywhere. 
