The American Clock: A Vaudeville

Description

'It is Mr. Miller's notion, potentially a great one, that the Baums' story can help tell the story of America itself during that traumatic era.' NEW YORK TIMES When the stock market crashes, the once-financially comfortable Baum family lose everything and are forced to leave their lofty home in Manhattan to live with relatives in Brooklyn: how can their pride, purpose and artistic endeavours survive such a sudden and shocking reversal of fortune? A sweeping, hard-hitting look at the Great Depression of the 1930s, The American Clock is a vaudevillian celebration of American resilience and optimism in the face of national crisis, and was performed on Broadway in 1980. This Methuen Drama Student Edition is edited by Jane K. Dominik, with commentary and notes that explore the play's production history (including excerpts from interviews with designers of the 1980 Broadway production) as well as the dramatic, thematic and academic debates that surround it.

Arthur Miller (1915-2005) was arguably the greatest American playwright of the twentieth century. Hist most famous work for the stage includes Death of a Salesman, The Crucible, All My Sons and A View from the Bridge. Six volumes of his plays and a volume of his theatre essays are published by Methuen Drama. Dr. Jane K. Dominik was Professor of English at San Joaquin Delta College in Stockton, California. Her work on Miller includes a commentary on The Price published by Methuen, "Empty Chairs, Pools of Light: Absent Characters in Arthur Miller's Drama" in Arthur Miller's Century: Essays Celebrating the 100th Birthday of America's Great Playwright edited by Stephen A. Marino, "The Critical Reception of Arthur Miller's Work" in Critical Insights: Arthur Miller edited by Brenda Murphy, "A View through Death of a Salesman" in The Salesman Has a Birthday edited by Stephen A. Marino, and "Music in Miller," "Before and After the Fall," "Prequels and Sequels: A Creative Assignment That Extends Students' Reading of Arthur Miller's Drama," and "Stifled Staid, and Suspect: The Working Women in Arthur Miller's Drama", and "A Conversation with Christopher Bigsby" in The Arthur Miller Journal, as well as reviews for the Arthur Miller Newsletter and The Arthur Miller Journal. She was interviewed about Miller's female characters for The Arthur Miller Society Podcast, has delivered more than two dozen conference papers on dramatic literature and education, and has performed scenes from Miller's plays and the role of Linda in Death of a Salesman. She was the founding editor of the newsletter, has served as President and Vice President of the Arthur Miller Society, and currently serves on the Board.

This panoramic 1980 play about America during the Great Depression [is] described as "a vaudeville" it shows how the nation's built-in optimism came up against economic reality ... The play, which combines the texture of despair with a residual hope epitomised in the line "a country can't just die", shows just how much the 30s shaped Miller's artistic imagination. ... It shows [Miller's] enduring capacity to capture the state of a troubled nation. -- Michael Billington * Guardian * The piece serves as a warning from history ... but there's nothing dusty or dutifully clock-watching about it ... [Miller] billed the show as a "vaudeville", likened it to a mural - and that gives him a means of pushing out across the nation, giving voice to a chorus of bewilderment, as the banks fail, the bailiffs call, the crops rot, and the air hangs heavy with resentment and revolutionary fervour. Yet swimming amid the tide of acrimony, there's stoical humour, resilient American optimism and even young romantic love ... [The play feels] eerily up to-the-moment and [serves] as an invaluable reminder of how an economic shock can change a country forever. -- Dominic Cavendish * Daily Telegraph * No 20th-century playwright was more gifted at depicting the downsides of the American dream than Arthur Miller -- Dominic Maxwell * The Times * Frequently magnificent and ... also ... nauseatingly prescient. [The play's] kaleidoscopic vision of an advanced society sleepwalking into an essentially self-inflicted disaster is certainly painfully relevant to Britain's current interests. ...It's a powerful, poignant and frequently enlightening journey ... This strange, flawed forgotten play is the most relevant piece of political theatre in town. -- Andrzej Lukowski * Time Out *