JET double bill features Metro Detroies first professional
performance of an Arthur Miller play since the playwrighes death.
DIANA LIEBERMAN
Special to the Jewish News
N
ews of playwright Arthur
Miller's Feb. 10 death came
as the Jewish Ensemble
Theatre was in the midst of prepar-
ing for a performance of his one-act
play The Last Yankee.
Although rehearsals had not yet
begun, the cast had been selected
and a letter was being drafted invit-
ing the 89-year-old dean of
American dramatists to attend the
production's March 20 premiere.
As it turns out, The Last Yankee
will be the first of Miller's plays
staged by a professional theater com-
pany in Metro Detroit since his
death. It is part of a double bill,
paired with Murray Schisgal's one-
act play 74 Georgia Avenue.
Directing the two plays is Lavinia
Moyer Hart, for 19 years artistic
director of the now-defunct Attic
Theater. Now head of the MFA act-
_ ing program at Wayne State
University in Detroit, Moyer Hart
was involved in a production of
Miller's 1949 play Death of a
Salesman at WSU's Hilberry Theatre
at the time of the playwright's death.
"When I left my office," she said,
"there was a notice that he had died,
pinned onto the bulletin board. We
were all stunned."
According to the Associated Press,
Miller had been suffering from can-
cer, pneumonia and a heart condi-
tion. After several months of care in
Manhattan, the playwright had
recently been moved at his request
to his own home, an 18th-century
farmhouse in rural Connecticut.
Although he was 89 at the time of
his death, Miller had never stopped
creating insightful dramatic works,
Moyer Hart said. "He made a mar-
velous contribution to culture in
America," she said. "He was able to
live a quiet and lovely life doing
what he wanted to do."
Evelyn Orbach, JET's artistic
director, called Miller "the dramatic
genius of the 20th century."
JET has previously staged produc-
tions of two full-length Miller plays:
The Price , written in 1968, and
Broken Glass, which dates from
1994.
"I think people will perform his
work forever because his insights are
so great into human behavior,"
Orbach said.
During the show's March 16-April
17 run, a tribute to Miller will be on
view in the lobby of JET's perform-
ance space, the Aaron DeRoy
Theatre, located on the lower level
of the Jewish Community Center of
Metropolitan Detroit in West
Bloomfield.
American Sensibility
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.
Top: Tom Mahard and James Bowen in
Murray Schisgal's "74 Georgia Avenue"
Above: Lynnae Lehfeldt and Laurie V. -
Logan in Arthur Miller's "The Last
Yankee"
"Anybody with any sense has to be
depressed in this country," says one
of the four characters in The Last
Yankee.
The play is set in a state mental
institution, where two women have
been hospitalized for severe depres-
sion. As their husbands come to visit
them, the audience gains insights
into the inner workings of the two
marriages and begin to suspect
which patient will recover her men-
tal health.
The lifestyles of the two couples
are suggested by the husbands' pro-
fessions: one is a carpenter and the
other a businessman. Neither is
Jewish.
"Like all Miller's works, there are
so many layers; there's always a tap-
estry of meaning," Orbach said. "In
this play, it's really a situation where
people are anxious to support who
they think they are. They are very
anxious that others buy into that,
sometimes to their own detriment."
Both The Last Yankee and
Schisgal's 74 Georgia Avenue, which
is written for two male actors, are
intrinsically American plays with
naturalistic settings and dialogue. In
addition, they both deal with people
who, in Orbach's words, "are trying
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3/10
2005
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