- After the Fall (play)
"After the Fall" is a play by American dramatist
Arthur Miller . The original performance opened inNew York City onJanuary 23 ,1964 , directed byElia Kazan and starringBarbara Loden and Jason Robards Jr., with acameo appearance byFaye Dunaway . Kazan also collaborated with Miller on the script. It is one of Miller's most personal plays, a thinly veiled personal critique centered around Miller's recently failedmarriage toMarilyn Monroe .The plot takes place inside the mind of Quentin, a New York
Jewish intellectual who decides to reexamine his life in order to determine if he should marry his most recent love, Holga.The play is often criticised for being too similar to Miller's actual life because Maggie's suicide is very similar to the suicide of Miller's once wife, Marilyn Monroe. In fact the feelings of the protagonist, Quentin, are often believed to be Miller's own reflection about his failed marriage. Although this work remains very unpopular to critics, it is revered in the academic arena as a deep and intellectual play, albeit difficult to follow since it does not follow the conventional sequence of events found in typical works.
The play remains one of Miller's less popular works, often attributed in part to the non-linear, often surreal nature of the plot and setting, as well as the spartan, unconventional backdrop.Fact|date=February 2007 Indeed, all but the final seconds of the play take place in the
protagonist 's brain, which is reflected by a set consisting of a single chair before aconcentration camp guard tower, which is itself surrounded by a giant, winding ramp made up of crevices, pits, and abutments. The plot unfolds over a period of time, due to the non-linear nature of the story; characters and occurrences appear as the protagonist remembers them, and, reflecting the nature of the mind, they often disappear and their stories remain unresolved until later in the play, when they spontaneously reappear again.Barbara Loden won the 1964
Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Play , andJason Robards was nominated for, but did not win, the 1964Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play .A television production of the play was shown in 1974. It starred
Faye Dunaway ,Christopher Plummer ,Bibi Andersson and a youngBrooke Shields . [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071109/]External links
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