Susan Granger’s review of “After the Fall” (American Airlines Theater, 2004-2005 season)
Arthur Miller’s obviously autobiographical play which exorcises leftover demons from his marriage to Marilyn Monroe is not one of his best. It premiered at Lincoln Center in 1964 and was revived, unsuccessfully, once before in New York. Now it’s back again – and still unrealized.
Quentin (Peter Krause) is a prominent lawyer who is afraid to commit to a new Viennese love (Vivienne Benesch) because he’s still coping with his guilt over the suicide of his previous wife, Maggie (Carla Gugino), a breathless, sweet-natured if dim-witted singer-superstar who worshipped him. “I would do anything for you,” Maggie says to him. “You’re like a god!”
But she’s not the only personal demon from his past who torments Quentin during his introspective, stream-of-consciousness reverie of guilt and redemption. There’s his domineering mother (Carol Buckley), an embittered ex-wife (Jessica Hecht) and a morally adaptable attorney (Jonathan Walker), obviously based on director Elia Kazan, evoking the Hollywood blacklist.
Best known as Nate on TV’s “Six Feet Under,” suave Krause seems a bit reserved for the role, so the evening belongs to Gugino (TV’s “Karen Sisco”) whose astute performance embodies the voluptuous Maggie’s pathological self-destructiveness along with her desperate need to be loved.
Michael Mayer’s direction, utilizing set designer Richard Hoover’s airport terminal – like Eero Saarinen’s defunct TWA building at JFK – as the backdrop for Quentin’s psychological conflict, evokes an abstract emotional distance, augmented by the 40 years that have passed since Monroe’s death. So in this Roundabout Theater revival, “After the Fall” once again fails because it is unable to unravel the unfocused emotional labyrinths created by Arthur Miller.