Playwright: Arthur Miller
At: Breadline Theatre, 1802 W. Berenice
Phone: (773) 975-0950; $15
Runs through: Aug. 31
The Ride Down Mount Morgan is a late-career (1991) Arthur Miller play, enjoying a lively—if belated—Midwest premiere. Although lacking the sustained dramatic and emotional power of Miller's best-known works, it nonetheless is consistently intelligent, amusing, surprising and even pithy (despite a 2:20 running time). More or less a comedy (although not built on jokes), it recounts the crack-up—literally—of a wealthy, self-made American businessman who smashes his Porsche on an icy mountain road. Summoned to the hospital, his wife of 30+ years and adult daughter discover that Lyman Felt is a bigamist with a second wife, a young son and a different personality. As Lyman defends himself against the expected shock, outrage and confusion, the play fluidly mixes past and present to tackle questions of deception, self-deception, betrayal, the definition of truth, whether or not ends justify means, and the nature of responsible manhood.
Answers aren't so obvious, for both wives are content women deeply in love with charming, wealthy, generous, socially concerned and caring Lyman; a devoted father, eager lover and a man who seems capable of change. Does it matter, Lyman challenges them and his Mormon attorney, that he needs both women to define himself? Doesn't he provide for all? Doesn't he satisfy all? His second, younger wife even declares that 'Every relationship I've known gets to where it needs a lie to keep it going,' and Lyman (get the name?) fulfills that declaration. In Act I, the attorney asks 'What is the main thing?' in life. In Act II, the first wife answers, 'Courage and directness are the main thing,' which are precisely what Lyman has lacked.
Under the direction of too-long-absent Virginia Smith, the on-the-mark Equity Library Theatre Chicago production flows swiftly, and is clean and simple in design and staging. A few chairs and a steel-framed hospital bed are the only furnishings in Holly Windingstad's scenic design, dominated by a mountainscape mural in which a profile of Lyman's face subtly emerges from the gray-green undulations of snowy, forested peaks. The six players easily take on the challenges of Miller's often-acerbic but sometimes stagy dialogue, as Miller's heightened language recalls an earlier generation of playwrights. Still somewhat self-conscious on opening night, the actors grasp their characters well and will deepen and mesh beautifully.
Mick Weber dominates as Lyman, with Katherine Marie Loague as older wife Theo, Tonya Beckman Ross as daughter Bessie, Jane Hannemann as younger wife Leah, Stephen Spencer as the attorney and Mimi Ayers as a sympathetic nurse. It's excellent to see a play written for mature actors (if anything, the ELT Chicago players still are too young) in which the characters are meant to be—and are—sexually alluring.