The Ride Down Mt. Morgan

Description

'Mr. Miller knows his audience... he is letting us know, the devil will have his due.' NEW YORK TIMES When insurance agent Lyman Felt is hospitalised following a near-fatal car crash, both of his wives show up at his bedside and his duplicitous bigamy is revealed. As his shocked spouses - the prim Theo and the assertive Leah - reel from this revelation and their husband's hypocrisy, an outrageous question is presented: is marriage actually easier this way? Touching on themes of betrayal, crisis and reconciliation, The Ride Down Mt. Morgan is one of Miller's more controversial works, and was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Play in 1991. This Methuen Drama Student Edition is edited by Thiago Russo, with commentary and notes that explore the play's production history (including excerpts from an interview with director David Esbjornson) as well as the dramatic, thematic and academic debates that surround it.

Arthur Miller (1915-2005) was arguably the greatest American playwright of the twentieth century. Hist most famous work for the stage includes Death of a Salesman, The Crucible, All My Sons and A View from the Bridge. Six volumes of his plays and a volume of his theatre essays are published by Methuen Drama. Thiago Russo is a psychoanalyst, master and doctor in American Literature from USP (Universidade de Sao Paulo). His PhD thesis partly produced at the University of Louisville (Kentucky) about Ride was elected the best in the program and was nominated best thesis at the Capes Award (one of the most prestigious of Brazil). He is one of the authors of Arthur Miller for the Twenty-First Century (Palgrave), and is currently writing his post-doctoral thesis about Arthur Miller's one-act plays and their sociopolitical contents at USP. Susan C. W. Abbotson is Professor of Dramatic Literature at Rhode Island College, USA.