After the Fall
By Arthur Miller
Directed by Elin O'Connell
New Theatre, Newtown (Sydney)
Friday-Sunday until November 13
Reviewed by Allen Myers
It's hard to find words sufficiently superlative to describe the New Theatre's After the Fall. This has to be one of the very best productions of the year — maybe several years.
Arthur Miller's challenging script is handled to perfection by the company: direction, set, lighting and acting are not merely flawless, but inspired.
Kevin Jackson deserves an award of some sort for his Quentin, the "Miller" figure in this semi-autobiographical drama. Quentin is onstage throughout the performance, constantly shifting from commentator to participant in a series of flashbacks. Jackson makes it look easy.
Yet Jackson, director Elin O'Connell and the other actors avoid the very real danger that the centrality of Quentin could smother the rest of the play. Jenny Lovell as Quentin's first wife and May Lloyd as Maggie, the Marilyn Monroe figure, have the key roles after Jackson's, and each creates a character who is memorable and convincing.
After the Fall was written in 1963, a decade after Miller's allegorical treatment of the McCarthyite witch-hunt in The Crucible. It deals with the same topic but with a more varied and complex focus.
Quentin is a lawyer willing to risk his career to defend victims of the witch-hunt, yet he is haunted by feelings of guilt; indeed, at times he seems to desire guilt. And, for all his success in public life, his personal relationships appear as a chain of inadequacies and failures.
The theme of social and private responsibilities is taken up and elaborated in the other characters, and in the interaction between them and Quentin. This is a rich and thought-provoking plot that works at several levels.
Most of the action of the play involves Quentin's relationships with women, from his mother onwards. At interval, we briefly discussed whether Miller's text was misogynist.
On consideration, I think the element of misogyny is in Quentin's character, not in Arthur Miller. While he is outwardly considerate of women, for Quentin women are a sort of distorting mirror, in which he can project and reject the aspects of his own character which most disturb him.
See it for yourself and make up your own mind. But whatever you do, don't miss it. Theatre like this is too rare to pass up.