Playwright: Arthur Miller
At: Actors Workshop,
1044 W. Bryn Mawr Ave.
Phone: ( 773 ) 728-7529; $20
Runs through: Feb. 5
The monument unveiled on Broadway in 1980 might have been sculpted by Arthur Miller, but its structure has Studs Terkel written all over it, and E.L. Doctorow's signature on the blueprints. But who could blame the playwright, after making his name with microcosmic depictions of an America in turmoil, for trying his hand at a WPA mural-sized portrait of the Great Depression? And who can blame the spunky Actors Workshop Theatre for testing the limits of its physical space with a likewise sprawling, panoramic pageant of a production?
But the leisurely pace of a book does not always translate to the abbreviated universe of a play. Miller's narrative conceit of having a single family—the nouveau-riche Mr. and Mrs. Baum of Manhattan, the latter's sister in Brooklyn, their naive children and grumpy grandfathers—serve as the focus, rather than the lens, of his historical docudrama places responsibility for holding our attention upon personalities purposely rendered generic, with none of the rich candor of individuals speaking for themselves that has become Terkel's stock-in-trade.
But insight into human beings forced to rely on their own ingenuity is precisely what engages us: The songwriter who courts his landlady's daughter to delay paying the rent, the dentist reduced to selling flowers in a subway station that will become his grave, the white southern-county sheriff meekly offering his household radio to a black short-order cook as collateral on a dinner to impress a recruiter for the government-paid State Patrol. Contrasted with such extreme measures, the anguish of bourgeois citizens fearing a communist takeover interrupt, more than they amplify, our understanding of the crisis at hand.
But though the literary conceits of The American Clock—we also get ringside commentary by a prescient stockholder who bailed before the Crash of 1929—and the inclusion of popular songs from the era make for a long sit-down in storefront-circuit chairs, director Jan Ellen Graves keeps the performances of her predominantly-young, uniformly-enthusiastic, players well within the boundaries of their cozy environment. In the wake of big-cast epics following 2003's The Cider House Rules, the Actors Studio looks to be a contendor, wanting only a little more breathing room.