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After the Fall
After the Fall (1964), a play by Arthur Miller. [ANTA, Washington Square Theatre, 208 perf.] Quentin ( Jason Robards Jr.) is a middle‐aged lawyer who attempts to bring his life into focus by examining his past. Clearly the women in his life have been pivotal. They were his troubled Mother ( Virginia Kaye); his first wife, Louise ( Mariclare Costello), who valued her independence above all; and his prospective third wife, Holga ( Salome Jens), still scarred by her life in Nazi Germany. But most of all there was his second wife, Maggie ( Barbara Loden), a beautiful but insecure actress who ultimately committed suicide. Many critics saw the play as an autobiographical shriving, with the main action centered on Miller's failed marriage to actress Marilyn Monroe. The play was the first production of the Repertory Theatre of Lincoln Center, but was mounted at a specially constructed theatre pending the completion of the Vivian Beaumont Theatre. After the Fall was revived Off Broadway in 1992 with Frank Langella as Quentin and in 2004 with Peter Krause in the role.
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Cite this article
Gerald Bordman and Thomas S. Hischak. "After the Fall." The Oxford Companion to American Theatre. 2004. Encyclopedia.com. 31 May. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>. Gerald Bordman and Thomas S. Hischak. "After the Fall." The Oxford Companion to American Theatre. 2004. Encyclopedia.com. (May 31, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O149-AftertheFall.html Gerald Bordman and Thomas S. Hischak. "After the Fall." The Oxford Companion to American Theatre. 2004. Retrieved May 31, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O149-AftertheFall.html |
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After the Fall
After the Fall, two‐act play by Arthur Miller, produced and published in 1964.
According to the stage directions, the “action takes place in the mind, thought, and memory” of Quentin, a man aged about 50, as persons with whom he has been involved “appear and disappear instantaneously.” These include his first wife, Louise, who berates him for failing to appreciate her as a person in her own right; a onetime friend and fellow Communist, now an informer to a congressional investigating committee; and another friend, also a former Communist, whom Quentin determines to defend but is happy not to have to when the friend commits suicide. The second act deals with the character Maggie, a onetime switchboard operator, then an enormously popular singer, Quentin's second wife, who sinks from guileless sexual love to neuroticism and pettiness destructive of him and finally of her, as she commits suicide. At the end Quentin seeks salvation through Holga, who has stood out against Hitler in Germany and who now appears destined to be Quentin's third wife. |
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Cite this article
James D. Hart and and Phillip W. Leininger. "After the Fall." The Oxford Companion to American Literature. 1995. Encyclopedia.com. 31 May. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>. James D. Hart and and Phillip W. Leininger. "After the Fall." The Oxford Companion to American Literature. 1995. Encyclopedia.com. (May 31, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O123-AftertheFall.html James D. Hart and and Phillip W. Leininger. "After the Fall." The Oxford Companion to American Literature. 1995. Retrieved May 31, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O123-AftertheFall.html |
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