It
has become a very pressing thought, of late, with the inevitable deployment of
over 600 Australian Defence Force personnel back to Iraq.
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
From the journal notes of Elia Kazan about the
first production of All My Sons, 1946,
Kazan on Directing by Elia Kazan, with a Foreword by John Lahr and a Preface by Martin Scorsese.
The greatest and most devastatingly encompassing
crisis that our civilisation can experience is war. Each man’s life depends
upon the courage, integrity and even philosophy of his neighbour in arms … What
does he prize? Honesty, courage, guts, truth, strength, trustworthiness of his
fighting neighbour.
The big conflict (in All My Sons) is between the
forces of honour, of responsibility to your neighbour, of equality and
democracy, of Christlikeness, of One World-ism. Versus this … the competitive
system, the jungle where one man exists only by the death (yes, sooner or
later, the death) of his neighbour. The competitive system, which basically
says 'Beat up the next guy. Say anything you want, think anything you want,
but one thing don’t risk: that the other guy might get ahead of you, that is
your death.'
Extracts from Arthur Miller: His Life and
Work
By Martin Gottfried
“Somehow a book has always been sort of remote to
me. It doesn’t offer the same kick that comes from the direct experience of a
confrontation with an audience. And when it comes to writing I think my talent
has always been fundamentally and essentially for the drama … I can do in three
pages of dialogue what would take me endless pages of words … There is also a
dramatic structure which I find endlessly fascinating. I love to vary and
reform it. And I love acting when I write. I’m the whole cast. I play all the
parts. And that’s not in a book either. And I love real actors too. I love to
sit there and change one line and see an explosion happen that wouldn’t have
happened if the line hadn’t been changed."
Photograph: John Jonas Gruen
All My Sons contains elements of Greek
tragedy, not only in its retroactive structure, but also in a story that at
times evokes Aeschylus’s Oresteia and Sophocles Oedipus Rex. Joe
Keller can be viewed as a king whose hands are stained with a son’s blood,
and Kate Keller as a Queen who is suspended between shielding her
husband and destroying him for love of a son.
Keller’s final entrance in
a dressing gown certainly affords him a regal appearance and the play
occasionally is staged to underline this, with Mrs Keller in a formal
robe as well and their home designed with touches of ancient Greece. Indeed the
British Director David Thacker believes that “the best way … is for the design
element to be non-realistic. Because … if it is trapped in a realistic setting,
it confines the actual scope and scale of the play.”
The Oedipal theme is carried further in Chris’s
behaviour toward his parents and the terrifying mix of love, protection and
vengeance in Mrs Keller. Likewise Ann, George and their absent
father might be viewed as the opposite of the Keller’s, an ill-used
and wrongfully deposed royal family of three. In their own way, they are similar
to Ophelia, Laertes and Polonius of Hamlet, another play with Greek
overtones.
Miller said that every line was calculated to
“land”, every scene designed to “work”.
He wanted audiences “to mistake my play
for life itself”.
Miller asked his new agent, Kay (Katherine) Brown
from the MCA agency to send his new play All My Sons to Elia
Kazan and Harold Clurman, a couple of old heroes from the late, beloved (“a society
of saints”) Group Theatre. The two had only recently formed a producing
partnership, and they made an odd couple. Clurman was a man of the mind, Kazan
a man of the stage; Clurman was a born teacher, Kazan a born magician.
Elia Kazan’s brilliance, social commitment,
psychological acuity, commercial sensibility and personal magnetism must have
lent him irresistible appeal for Miller. They also shared political
commitments. Although Kazan had quit the Communist Party, leftist ideas were still
on his mind, to judge by his preparatory notes for All My Sons. He makes
frequent references to “the capitalist system” and personal aggrandizement” and
“the mad scramble for money …the jungle where one man exists only by the death
of his neighbour.”
Kazan’s first note is dated November 18, 1946, on the eve of
rehearsals, one month before All My Sons was to begin its tryout tour in
New Haven. The Broadway premiere was scheduled for 29 January 1947. “Preparing
the Miller play,” Kazan noted. “First, what it should all mean. Second, each
character’s meaning. Third, what each character does in the inner sense.
Fourth, how this is externalised.”
— Peta Hanrahan
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