| After the Fall | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Written by | Arthur Miller |
| Characters |
|
| Date premiered | January 23, 1964 |
| Place premiered | ANTA Washington Square Theatre |
| Original language | English |
| Setting | New York |
After the Fall is a play by the American dramatist Arthur Miller.
| After the Fall | |
|---|---|
| | |
| Written by | Arthur Miller |
| Characters |
|
| Date premiered | January 23, 1964 |
| Place premiered | ANTA Washington Square Theatre |
| Original language | English |
| Setting | New York |
After the Fall is a play by the American dramatist Arthur Miller.
The play premiered on Broadway at the ANTA Washington Square Theatre on January 23, 1964, and closed on May 29, 1964 after 208 performances. Directed by Elia Kazan, who collaborated with Miller on the script, the cast starred Barbara Loden as Maggie and Jason Robards Jr. as Quentin, along with Ralph Meeker as Mickey, [1] Salome Jens as Holga, and an early appearance by Faye Dunaway as Nurse. [2]
Barbara Loden, who would become Kazan's wife in 1967, won the 1964 Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play, and Jason Robards was nominated for the 1964 Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play. [2]
In 1984, the play was revived Off-Broadway at Playhouse 91, where it ran from October 4 to December 2 that year. Directed by John Tillinger, the cast starred Frank Langella and Dianne Wiest. [3] [4]
In 2004, the play was revived on Broadway at the American Airlines Theatre in a Roundabout Theatre Company production from June 25 (previews) to September 12 that year. Directed by Michael Mayer, the cast starred Peter Krause and Carla Gugino. [5] The play was nominated for the 2005 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Set Design of a Play (Richard Hoover). [6]
 | This section needs additional citations for verification .(December 2016) |
After the Fall, one of Miller's more personal plays, is a thinly veiled personal critique centered on Miller's recent divorce from Marilyn Monroe: the plot takes place inside the mind of Quentin, a New York City Jewish intellectual who decides to reexamine his life, in order to determine whether or not he should marry his most recent love, Holga.
The play has been roundly criticised by some for being too similar to Miller's actual life because Maggie's suicide is similar to the accidental overdose death of Miller's former wife, Monroe. The feelings of the protagonist, Quentin, are often believed to be Miller's own reflections about his failed marriage.[ citation needed ]
For example, according to Sarah Bradford, in her biography America's Queen: The Life of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, "Jackie, who had admired Arthur Miller enough to seat him at her table at the Malraux dinner, turned on him for his betrayal of Marilyn in his play After the Fall, which opened in New York on January 23, 1964. For [Jackie Kennedy] loyalty was the ultimate test of character, and in portraying Marilyn as a self-destructive slut whom he had abandoned for her own good, Miller had dismally failed it." [7]
Barbara Loden received critical acclaim for her performance as Maggie. Howard Taubman of The New York Times called Loden's performance "stunning"; he further noted she "all but enkindles the stage, in her early scenes as the warm, childlike enchantress and in her later ones as the sick, frenzied demon of allure bent on self-destruction". [8] Earl Wilson, in a column for the San Francisco Examiner , wrote Loden "is so good as Marilyn Monroe in Arthur Miller's After the Fall that she has officially tossed her pajama tops into the ring to be the new American Sex Symbol ... and she deserves it". [9] John Chapman of the New York Daily News called Loden's performance "magnificently played", as well noted she is "ash blonde, very beautiful and very sexy, [and] is an astonishing reminder of the late Marilyn Monroe." [10]
A review in Time magazine called the play "endlessly fascinating, emotionally harrowing, and consumingly committed to telling the truth as Miller sees it." It also noted Kazan had charged the play "with theatrical electricity", while calling Robards Jr.'s performance as Quentin " brilliant, grueling". [11] Hobe Morrison of Variety described After the Fall as an "almost exactly three hours of guilt confession and self-justification". In summary, he felt Miller's play is "interesting, but exhausting. In short, After the Fall is a play of contrasts and despite its faults, not to be dismissed." [12] Claudia Cassidy was more critical of Miller's play, calling it "a three hour monolog of self-justification, with interruptions and conjurations, by a guilt-ridden man who has bad luck with women". [13] Frank Rich reviewed a 1984 revival, in which he felt the play "is never as moving or profound as it wants to be. The play remains a collection of sporadically arresting autobiographical fragments—all floating in a glutinous interior monologue that substitutes tortuous rhetoric for psychological or metaphysical insight." [3]
In June 1964, Miller sold the screen rights to the play to Carlo Ponti and Ira Steiner, for an estimated $500,000. Paul Newman and Ponti's wife Sophia Loren were in line to portray Quentin and Maggie. Fred Zinnemann was in discussions to direct the film. [14]
A television production of the play was shown in December 1974 on NBC. It starred Faye Dunaway, Christopher Plummer, Bibi Andersson, and a young Brooke Shields, and was directed by Gilbert Cates. Arthur Miller wrote the teleplay based upon his original stage play.[ citation needed ] [15] [16]
Arthur Asher Miller was an American playwright, essayist and screenwriter in the 20th-century American theater. Among his most popular plays are All My Sons (1947), Death of a Salesman (1949), The Crucible (1953), and A View from the Bridge (1955). He wrote several screenplays, including The Misfits (1961). The drama Death of a Salesman is considered one of the best American plays of the 20th century.
Marilyn Monroe was an American actress and model. Known for playing comic "blonde bombshell" characters, she became one of the most popular sex symbols of the 1950s and early 1960s, as well as an emblem of the era's sexual revolution. She was a top-billed actress for a decade, and her films grossed $200 million by the time of her death in 1962. Long after her death, Monroe remains a pop culture icon. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked her as the sixth-greatest female screen legend from the Golden Age of Hollywood.
Lee Ann Remick was an American actress and singer. She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for the film Days of Wine and Roses (1962).
Jason Nelson Robards Jr. was an American actor. Known for his roles on stage and screen, he gained a reputation as an interpreter of the works of playwright Eugene O'Neill. Robards received numerous accolades and is one of 24 performers to have achieved the Triple Crown of Acting having earned competitive wins for two Academy Awards, a Tony Award, and a Emmy Award. He was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame in 1979, earned the National Medal of Arts in 1997, and the Kennedy Center Honors in 1999.
Peter William Krause is an American actor, director, and producer. He has played lead roles in multiple television series, portraying Casey McCall on Sports Night (1998–2000), Nate Fisher on Six Feet Under (2001–2005), Nick George on Dirty Sexy Money (2007–2009), Adam Braverman on Parenthood (2010–2015), Benjamin Jones on The Catch (2016–2017), and Bobby Nash on Fox/ABC's 9-1-1 (2018–present).
All My Sons is a three-act play written in 1946 by Arthur Miller. It opened on Broadway at the Coronet Theatre in New York City on January 29, 1947, closed on November 8, 1947, and ran for 328 performances. It was directed by Elia Kazan, produced by Kazan and Harold Clurman, and won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award. It starred Ed Begley, Beth Merrill, Arthur Kennedy, and Karl Malden and won both the Tony Award for Best Author and the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play. The play was adapted for films in 1948 and 1987.
A View from the Bridge is a play by American playwright Arthur Miller. It was first staged on September 29, 1955, as a one-act verse drama with A Memory of Two Mondays at the Coronet Theatre on Broadway. The run was unsuccessful, and Miller subsequently revised and extended the play to contain two acts; this version is the one with which audiences are most familiar. The two-act version premiered in the New Watergate theatre club in London's West End under the direction of Peter Brook on October 11, 1956.
Paula Strasberg was an American stage actress. She became actor and teacher Lee Strasberg's second wife and mother of actors John and Susan Strasberg, as well as Marilyn Monroe's acting coach and confidante.
Carla Gugino is an American actress. After early roles in the films Troop Beverly Hills (1989), This Boy's Life (1993), Son in Law (1993), and Snake Eyes (1998), Gugino received wider recognition for her starring roles in the Spy Kids trilogy (2001–2003), Sin City (2005), Night at the Museum (2006), American Gangster (2007), Righteous Kill (2008), Race to Witch Mountain (2009), Sally Jupiter in Watchmen (2009), Sucker Punch (2011), Mr. Popper's Penguins (2011), San Andreas (2015), Gerald's Game (2017), Gunpowder Milkshake (2021), and Lisa Frankenstein (2024).
Marilyn Miller was one of the most popular Broadway musical stars of the 1920s and early 1930s. She was an accomplished tap dancer, singer and actress, and the combination of these talents endeared her to audiences. On stage, she usually played rags-to-riches Cinderella characters who lived happily ever after. She died suddenly from complications of nasal surgery at age 37.
Joan Maxine Kupchik, known professionally as Joan Copeland, was an American actress. She was the younger sister of playwright Arthur Miller. She began her career during the mid-1940s, appearing in theatre in New York City, where, shortly thereafter, she would become one of the first members admitted to the newly formed Actors Studio. She moved into television and film during the 1950s while still maintaining an active stage career. She is best known for her performances in the 1977 Broadway revival of Pal Joey and her award-winning performance in the 1981 play The American Clock. She also played a number of prominent roles on various soap operas throughout her career, including Andrea Whiting on Search for Tomorrow and Gwendolyn Lord Abbott on One Life to Live. She voiced Tanana in Brother Bear.
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Molly Day Kazan was an American dramatist and the first wife of director Elia Kazan.
Zoe Swicord Kazan is an American actress and writer. She made her acting debut in the film Swordswallowers and Thin Men (2003) and later acted in films such as The Savages (2007), Revolutionary Road (2008), and It's Complicated (2009). She starred in Happythankyoumoreplease (2010), Meek's Cutoff (2010), Ruby Sparks (2012), What If (2013), The Big Sick (2017), The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018), and She Said (2022). She also wrote Ruby Sparks and co-wrote Wildlife (2018) with her partner Paul Dano.
Strawhead is a play by American writers Norman Mailer and Richard Hannum about Marilyn Monroe. The play is an adaptation of Mailer's 1980 book Of Women and Their Elegance, an imagined memoir told in Monroe's voice.
The ANTA Washington Square Theatre was a theatre located on 40 West Fourth Street, in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City. It was run by the American National Theater and Academy (ANTA) and initial home to the Repertory Theatre of Lincoln Center from early 1964 to the completion of the Vivian Beaumont Theater in 1965. The theatre, not to be confused with the ANTA Theatre on 52nd Street, was located away from the mainstream Broadway district. Closed in 1968, it used a thrust stage tilted toward the audience, with the audience sitting on three sides of it. It did not employ the use of a curtain.
Marilyn: The Untold Story is a 1980 television film, about the life of the 1950s sex symbol-movie star, Marilyn Monroe. The feature stars Catherine Hicks as Monroe; Richard Basehart as her early-career agent Johnny Hyde; Frank Converse as her second husband Joe DiMaggio; Jason Miller as her third husband Arthur Miller; Kevin Geer as her first husband James Dougherty; Viveca Lindfors as her acting coach Natasha Lytess; and Sheree North as her mother Gladys Pearl Baker.
Bombshell is an American musical with music by Marc Shaiman and lyrics by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman based on the original fictitious musical from the first season of the NBC television series Smash. The songs include soulful jazz anthems and upbeat pop songs. Bombshell is the life story of Marilyn Monroe. It tells the story of the aspiring starlet who transforms herself into a worldwide sex symbol, including her early life and her alleged affair with American President John F. Kennedy. Despite the same name, and subject matter, this musical from SMASH is unrelated to the Off-Broadway musical from 2001 which ran at the Grove Street Playhouse.
After the Fall is a 1974 American television film directed by Gilbert Cates and starred Faye Dunaway, Christopher Plummer, Bibi Andersson, Murray Hamilton, Nancy Marchand and Brooke Shields. It is an adaptation of Arthur Miller's 1964 semi-autobiographical play based on his marriage to Marilyn Monroe. The production was broadcast on NBC on December 10, 1974.
