Remembering the last of the giants

Tom Titus

Arthur Miller is no longer America’s greatest living playwright, an

unofficial distinction he held for the past 22 years following the

death of Tennessee Williams in 1983. His passing at the age of 89

marks the end of an era and he leaves a magnificent legacy.

For most of the 20th century, Miller, Williams and Eugene O’Neill

comprised a lofty triumvirate, three dramatists whose works

overshadowed their contemporaries much like Stephen Sondheim’s

musical accomplishments dwarf his fellow Broadway composer-lyricists

today. They were the giants of their craft, writers who chronicled

the human condition with power and perception.

Miller, arguably the greatest of the trio, gave the American

theater some of its more enduring dramas -- “The Crucible,” “All My

Sons,” “A View From the Bridge” and the definitive tragedy of the

common man, “Death of a Salesman.” One only has to label an aging

underachiever a “Willy Loman” and the connection is instantly

established.

“I am simply asking for a theater in which an adult who wants to

live can find plays that will heighten his awareness of what living

in our time involves,” is how Miller once defined his craft.

The playwright who probably ranks fourth on the all-time list,

Edward Albee, noted that “his plays and his conscience are a cold

burning force.”

The word “conscience” defined Miller’s work from the outset. He

first burst on the Broadway scene with “All My Sons,” an indictment

of war profiteering, in 1947. “Salesman” followed in 1949 and thrust

Miller to the forefront of American playwrights, a position he

solidified with “The Crucible” in 1953 and “A View From the Bridge”

in 1956.

There were other works from this prolific author -- “After the

Fall,” “The Price,” “Incident at Vichy,” “Playing for Time,” as well

as several titles few playgoers have heard of and which are rarely

produced (“The Creation of the World and Other Business”) -- but

those first four plays cemented Miller’s place in history nearly a

half century before his eventual death.

He also penned a movie script -- “The Misfits” -- for his

then-wife, Marilyn Monroe, in 1961. It would be the last picture both

for Monroe and co-star Clark Gable, whose deaths soon followed.

I had the privilege of working on two Arthur Miller plays,

directing “All My Sons” in 1983 for the Irvine Community Theater (in

which my son, 10-year-old Tim, was involved) and playing Deputy

Governor Danforth in a 1994 revival of “The Crucible” at Orange Coast

College with my 15-year-old daughter, Mindy, in the cast. If, as is

generally believed, the play was a frontal assault on the McCarthy

Red-scare trials of the early ‘50s, then I guess I was playing the

Joe McCarthy character.

Local audiences may avail themselves of the master’s works on at

least two occasions this year when the Huntington Beach Playhouse

opens “The Crucible” April 29 and South Coast Repertory revives “A

View From the Bridge” late in May.

Eighty-nine years and a colossal body of work have secured the

place of Arthur Miller in the pantheon of American playwrights. His

words will touch the consciences of audiences for many years to come.

* TOM TITUS reviews local theater for the Daily Pilot. His reviews

appear Fridays.