Arthur Miller Plays 1: All My Sons; Death of a Salesman; The Crucible; A Memory of Two Mondays; A View from the Bridge

Description

"The greatest American dramatist of our age." (Evening Standard) In this collected works, five of Arthur Miller's most-produced and popular plays are brought together in a new edition, alongside an exclusive introduction by Ivo van Hove, the celebrated contemporary director of Miller's works. All five plays were written by Miller within a ten-year period which began with his first Broadway hit, All My Sons, in 1947 which led Brooks Atkinson of the New York Times to state that 'theatre has acquired a genuine new talent.' This was followed in 1949 by his exploration of the American Dream in Death of a Salesman, which went on to win the Tony Award for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The Crucible followed in 1953, produced during the McCarthy era and becoming a parable of the witch-hunting practices of a government determined to root-out Communists. A View from the Bridge, originally performed in 1955, concerns the lives of longshoremen in the Brooklyn waterfront and has remained one of Miller's most produced plays. Originally presented as a one-act companion piece to A Memory of Two Mondays, both plays explore the dreams and working lives of ordinary Americans in the early decades of the 20th century. Freshly edited and featuring a bold new design, this updated edition of Arthur Miller Plays 1 is a must-have for theatre fans and students alike.

Arthur Miller was born in New York City in 1915. After graduating from the University of Michigan, he began work with the Federal Theatre Project. His first Broadway hit was All My Sons, closely followed by Death of a Salesman, The Crucible and A View from the Bridge. His other writing include Focus, a novel; The Misfits, first published as a short story, then as a cinema novel; In Russia, In the Country, Chinese Encounters (all in collaboration with his wife, photographer Inge Morath) and 'Salesman' in Beijing, non-fiction; and his autobiography, Timebends, published in 1987. Among his other plays are: Incident At Vichy, The Creation of the World and Other Business, The American Clock, The Last Yankee, Resurrection Blues and Finishing the Picture. His novella, Plain Girl, was published in 1995 and his second collection of short stories, Presence, in 2007. He died in February 2005 aged eighty-nine.