Theatre review: Here in America

It seems a long time since I saw a David Edgar play and all of a sudden he's got two new ones out; first up at the Orange Tree is Here In America, a look at the friendship and professional relationship between playwright Arthur Miller and his regular director Elia Kazan, and how it was strained by the House Un-American Activities Committee, which called them both to testify with very different outcomes. Although the play makes no disguise of who the characters are, they all go by nicknames: Kazan goes by Gadg, short for Gadget (Shaun Evans,) who's invited Art (Michael Aloni) to his house to look at cheese, and to confess to him that he's about to go in front of HUAC to name members of their theatre company who were communists alongside him. Of the two, Art was never actually a card-carrying party member, but he's the one who's still held onto the strongest anti-capitalist beliefs, as well as the sense of honour in not betraying his friends.

These scenes in 1952 are bookended by ones a decade later when Art has enlisted Gadg to direct a new play that touches on someone they both knew well, so as well as what put a rift between the two men, Edgar is also looking at what made them work together again.

It's an interesting topic but the play only occasionally capitalises on this, with Edgar focusing largely on conversations between the two men, and James Dacre's production stays flat and cold. Part of the problem may be that the two female characters are quite clumsily used: Gadg is conflicted but pragmatic about the actions he feels necessary but his wife Day (Faye Castelow) is shown as a true believer who thinks communists have infiltrated every corner of American life, and has convinced herself Miller's plays are in fact about American supremacy because they acknowledge Americans' problems rather than hiding them like a totalitarian state would.

The other character is Marilyn Monroe, who both men had had affairs with under the pseudonym Miss Bauer, and whom Miller would marry and divorce in the decade between the story's beginning and end. Her appearances are both a strength and a weakness, as Jasmine Blackborow's performance, authentic without really going for an impression, brings life and energy to scenes that threaten to consume themselves in circular arguments.

But the way she's integrated into the play in the first place, as an imagined personification of both men's consciences, feels like a heavy-handed way of adding more star power, and of making us see her as the connection that eventually brought the men back together (for a play that, unlike Miller's more famous works, the script avoids namechecking: For obvious reasons, Kazan misses out on directing The Crucible; their big reunion is for the largely forgotten, critically mauled After the Fall.) As for Here In America, it doesn't deserve a similar mauling, but neither does it feel as if it's made the most of its subject and characters.

Here in America by David Edgar is booking until the 19th of October at the Orange Tree Theatre.

Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes straight through.

Photo credit: Manuel Harlan.