After the Fall

Description

'Much like Mr. Miller, Quentin is a witness to alarming public and personal catastrophes: the stock market crash, the Holocaust, the McCarthy witchhunts and the self-destruction of a show business idol to whom he is married.' NEW YORK TIMES Haunted by past romantic failures, Quentin, a New York City Jewish intellectual, retreats into his mind as he debates marrying for a third time: as he revisits past loves and losses, his mind and memory fragments under philosophical questions; are our failures really just our own? Or is possible to hide away from the mistakes of the past? One of Miller's most personal plays, After the Fall takes place almost entirely inside the mind of the play's protagonist, who is often read as a stand-in for the playwright himself. Touching on themes of the Holocaust, McCarthyism and inherited sin, the play is one of the most discussed within Miller's canon. This Methuen Drama Student Edition is edited by Ramon Espejo-Romero, with commentary and notes that explore the play's production history (including excerpts from an interview with Michael Blakemore, former Associate Director of the Royal National Theatre,) 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. Ramon Espejo-Romero (volume editor) is Professor in the Department of English and American Literature at the University of Seville, Spain, where he has been teaching American Literature and Culture for over 20 years. Susan C. W. Abbotson (series editor) is Professor of Dramatic Literature at Rhode Island College, USA.

Because After the Fall takes place entirely in Quentin's mind, all of us are privy to his abject self-pity, cynicism and self-reproach. By extension - because he is the mythic Everyman - we, too, are guilty. We've all been kicked out of Eden. We're all branded. But like every biblical hero who harbors the dream of salvation, Quentin is not without hope, even in the midst of the Red Scare. He wants to smash the false idols within himself. * LA Times *