The American Clock

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The American Clock is a play by Arthur Miller. The play is about 1930s America during The Great Depression. It is based in part on Studs Terkel's Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression .

Play (theatre) form of literature intended for theatrical performance

A play is a form of literature written by a playwright, usually consisting of dialogue or singing between characters, intended for theatrical performance rather than just reading. Plays are performed at a variety of levels, from Broadway, Off-Broadway, regional theater, to Community theatre, as well as university or school productions. There are rare dramatists, notably George Bernard Shaw, who have had little preference as to whether their plays were performed or read. The term "play" can refer to both the written texts of playwrights and to their complete theatrical performance.

Arthur Miller American playwright

Arthur Asher Miller was an American playwright, essayist, and a controversial figure in the twentieth-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. He wrote several screenplays and was most noted for his work on The Misfits (1961). The drama Death of a Salesman has been numbered on the short list of finest American plays in the 20th century.

Studs Terkel American author, historian and broadcaster

Louis "Studs" Terkel was an American author, historian, actor, and broadcaster. He received the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1985 for The Good War, and is best remembered for his oral histories of common Americans, and for hosting a long-running radio show in Chicago.

Contents

Plot

The Baum family—father Moe, mother Rose and son Lee are trying to cope during the great Depression of the 1930s. They were wealthy but lost their money during the Depression. They are forced to move from their home in Manhattan to live with relatives in Brooklyn. Lee wants to be a writer (and narrates the play).

Manhattan Borough in New York City and county in New York, United States

Manhattan, often referred to locally as the City, is the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City and its economic and administrative center, cultural identifier, and historical birthplace. The borough is coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state of New York. The borough consists mostly of Manhattan Island, bounded by the Hudson, East, and Harlem rivers; several small adjacent islands; and Marble Hill, a small neighborhood now on the U.S. mainland, physically connected to the Bronx and separated from the rest of Manhattan by the Harlem River. Manhattan Island is divided into three informally bounded components, each aligned with the borough's long axis: Lower, Midtown, and Upper Manhattan.

Brooklyn Borough in New York City and county in New York state, United States

Brooklyn is the most populous borough of New York City, with an estimated 2,648,771 residents in 2017. Named after the Dutch village of Breukelen, it borders the borough of Queens at the western end of Long Island. Brooklyn has several bridge and tunnel connections to the borough of Manhattan across the East River, and the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge connects Staten Island. Since 1896, Brooklyn has been coterminous with Kings County, the most populous county in the U.S. state of New York and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, after New York County.

Characters

  • Theodore K. Quinn
  • Lee Baum
  • Rose Baum (Lee's Mother)
  • Arthur A. Robertson
  • Clarence, a shoeshine man
  • Fanny Margolies (Rose's Sister)
  • Sidney Margolies (Fanny's son)
  • Lucille (Fanny's daughter)
  • Grandpa (Rose's Father)
  • Frank (The Baums' Chauffeur)
  • Dr. Rossman
  • Jesse Livermore
  • William Durant
  • Arthur Clayton
  • Tony (Speakeasy Owner)
  • Diana Morgan
  • Henry Taylor (A Farmer)
  • Irene
  • Banks, a black veteran
  • Judge Bradley
  • Sheriff
  • Isaac
  • Moe Baum (Lee's Father)
  • Brewster
  • Doris Gross (Sidney's wife)
  • Stanislaus

Productions

The play premiered at the Spoleto Festival U.S.A., Charleston, South Carolina in May 1980. [1] [2]

The play premiered on Broadway at the Biltmore Theatre on November 11, 1980 and closed on November 30, 1980 after 12 performances and 11 previews. The director was Vivian Matalon, with the cast that featured Miller's younger sister, Joan Copeland, who won a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Play for her portrayal of Rose Baum. William Atherton portrayed Lee Baum and John Randolph played Moe Baum. [3]

Vivian Matalon was a British theatre director.

Joan Copeland American actress and the younger sister of playwright Arthur Miller

Joan Maxine Copeland is an American actress. She is 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 very 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 has 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.

The Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Play is an annual award presented by Drama Desk in recognition of achievements in the theatre among Broadway, Off Broadway and Off-Off Broadway productions. The awards were established in 1955, with acting awards being given without making distinctions between roles in plays and musicals, or actors and actresses. The new award categories were later created in the 1975 ceremony.

The play was presented by the Royal National Theatre in London in August 1986 at the Cottesloe Theatre, and then transferred to the Olivier Theatre in December 1986. Directed by Peter Wood, the cast featured Michael Bryant as Moe Baum, Sara Kestelman as Rose Baum and Neil Daglish as Lee Baum. [4] This version of the play had been revised from the original Broadway production and included "a jazz band, songs from the 30s, and a music hall spotlight." In the production Rose sits at the piano as the band plays. [5] The play was nominated for the 1986 Olivier Award, BBC Award for the Play of the Year, and Peter Wood was nominated for Director of the Year. [6]

Royal National Theatre theatre in London, England

The Royal National Theatre in London, commonly known as the National Theatre (NT), is one of the United Kingdom's three most prominent publicly funded performing arts venues, alongside the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal Opera House. Internationally, it is known as the National Theatre of Great Britain.

Peter Wood was an English theatre and film director.

Michael Dennis Bryant, was a British stage and television actor.

The play was produced at the Williamstown Theater Festival (Williamstown, Massachusetts), directed by Austin Pendleton in July 1988. [1] [7]

Austin Pendleton American actor and director

Austin Campbell Pendleton is an American actor, playwright, theatre director and instructor.

The play was presented Off-Broadway by the Signature Theatre Company in October 1997. The cast featured Laura Esterman as Rose, Lewis J. Stadlen as Moe and Jason Fisher as Lee. This version of the play had "twenty-eight well-known American songs", including those written by Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern George and Ira Gershwin, which were performed by four musicians. [8] [9]

In March 2012 director Phil Willmott revived the show at the Finborough Theatre in London. Issy van Randwyck starred. [10]

Miller "attributes the Broadway failure of American Clock to several factors, including a misguided staging of the play and his own capitulation to pressures to rewrite the material in ways that conformed to conventional expectations but robbed the work of its true voice." [1]

The play was produced at The Old Vic, London in 2019, directed by Rachel Chavkin. The production again included a jazz band on stage, and several song & dance routines, mainly in the first half. However its unique feature was that the three members of the Baum family were each played by three different actors, one family cast as white, the second as probably of South Asian origin and the third as Afro Americans. The three sets of actors appeared at various points in the narrative, often on the stage together. Critical reaction was mixed, with most liking the unique casting, whilst agreeing that the fairly weak plot makes this one of Miller’s weaker plays.

Critical response

Frank Rich wrote: "It is Mr. Miller's notion, potentially a great one, that the Baums' story can help tell the story of America itself during the traumatic era that gave birth to our own. As it happens, neither tale is told well in The American Clock: indeed, the Baums and history fight each other to a standoff." [2]

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References

  1. 1 2 3 Bennetts, Leslie. "Miller Revives 'American Clock' Amid Resonances of 30's" The New York Times, July 14, 1988
  2. 1 2 Rich, Frank. "Miller's 'American Clock'" The New York Times, November 21, 1980, accessed December 17, 2016
  3. ↑ The American Clock Playbill (vault), accessed December 17, 2016
  4. ↑ Miller, Arthur. "Introduction", The American Clock: A Play, Dramatists Play Service, Inc., 1982, ISBN   0822200279, pp. 11-12
  5. ↑ Bigsby, C. W. E. (ed). "Miller in the 80s", The Cambridge Companion to Arthur Miller, Cambridge University Press, 1997, ISBN   0521559928, p. 159
  6. ↑ "Olivier Awards, 1986" olivierawards.com, accessed December 17, 2016
  7. ↑ The American Clock at the Williamstown Theater Festival wtfestival.org, accessed May 19, 2017
  8. ↑ Sommer, Elyse. "A CurtainUp Review . The American Clock " CurtainUp.com, October 25, 1997
  9. ↑ " 'The American Clock' Off-Broadway, 1997" lortel.org, accessed December 18, 2016
  10. ↑ The American Clock finboroughtheatre.co.uk, accessed December 17, 2016
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