Tag Archives: Arthur Miller

A Drama by Arthur Miller

Winner of the 1953 Tony Award for best play, this exciting drama about the Puritan purge of witchcraft in old Salem, Massachusetts, is both a gripping historical play, and a timely parable of our contemporary society. The plays shows how small lies — children’s lies — build and build, until a whole town is aroused and nineteen men and women go to the gallows for being possessed of the Devil. After a servant girl maliciously accuses a farmer’s young wife of witchcraft, the farmer brings the girl to court to admit the lie. The ensuing thrilling, blood-curdling, and terrifying trial scene, with its depiction of bigotry and deceit, hurtles the characters to a sad and ironic conclusion. Miller wrote the play after he was hauled before the House Committee on Un-American Activities on charges of being a Communist.

A Drama by Arthur Miller

Winner of the Drama Critics’ Award for the best new American play of the season

During World War II, Joe Keller and Herbert Deever ran a machine shop which sold aeroplane parts. Deever was sent to prison because the firm turned out defective parts, causing the deaths of many men. Keller went free and made a great deal of money. The love affair of Chris Keller and Ann Deever, the bitterness of George Deever, returned from the war to find his father in prison and his father’s partner free, are set in a structure of almost unbearable power. The climax, showing the reaction of a son to his guilty father, is a fitting conclusion to a play electrifying in its intensity.

A Drama by Arthur Miller

An intense, meaningful play which deals with the Nazis’ inhuman treatment of the Jews – and the burden of guilt which all men must share. In 1942, in the detention room of a Vichy police station, eight men have been picked up for questioning. As they wait to be called, they wonder why they were chosen. At first, their hopeful guess is that only their identity papers will be checked. But it soon develops that all of them are Jews or are suspected to be. One by one they disappear for interrogation until only two remain. The startling change of events at the end of this gripping play, redeems, at least in part, the concern and honour of decent men everywhere.