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Synopsis Blessed with good fortune, David Beeves's life can't get much better. But as the lives of those around him begin to crumble, he starts to question his own destiny. Follows one man's struggle to change his fate, and asks the question - is there such a thing as too much luck?
More than 50 years after it first premiered, Arthur Miller’s play The Man Who Had All the Luck may have found its own overdue luck with the critics, thanks to the Donmar Warehouse’s revival of the rarely seen play, which opened last night (5 March 2008, previews from 28 February). It continues until 5 April at the Covent Garden venue and then tours to Manchester, Liverpool and Truro in Cornwall.
In the American mid-West, David Beeves is a young car mechanic blessed – or cursed? - with almost supernatural good fortune. While those around him suffer life’s regular blows, everything goes David’s way. At the Donmar Warehouse, Andrew Buchan stars in Sean Holmes’ production
The Man Who Had All the Luck was Miller’s first Broadway play, but when it opened in 1944, it closed after only four performances. Following the failure of the play, which was based on an earlier repeatedly rejected novel, the discouraged author, then in his twenties, vowed that he would never write another play. Fortunately, he didn’t stick to that vow and his subsequent efforts within the next five years - All My Sons and Death of a Salesman - achieved much greater success.
First night critics at the Donmar were somewhat mystified as to why Miller’s play was such a flop first time round. Though they identified an inevitable immaturity to the writing, they were also fascinated by its portent of things to come in the playwright’s later works. The piece is well served by Sean Holmes’ “riveting” and “invigorating” production, led by the “fresh-faced” if occasionally “placid” Andrew Buchan. As Beeves’ more luckless relatives, Michelle Terry, Felix Scott and Nigel Cooke’s performances are also “urgent and persuasive”. Altogether, the production helps unearth a Miller that, while “minor” is nonetheless “intriguing”.
Michael Coveney on Whatsonstage.com (four stars) – “Sean Holmes’ riveting and super-charged revival is the third in Britain … Everything goes David’s way to such an extent he begins to anticipate disaster. Although Miller revised the play’s ending in 1986 – David now committed suicide – the Donmar sticks to the original version. There are some drastic narrative upheavals in the last two acts, but Holmes’ cast rides them like bronco bucks, especially Michelle Terry who is really outstanding as David’s wife Hester … Andrew Buchan’s likeably passive and good-natured David takes everything as it comes … Mark Lewis Jones as an expansive, drunken neighbour, Aidan Kelly as a bitter war veteran with a secret, and Sandra Voe as sweet old Aunt Belle, flesh out other areas of domestic tension. The playing is altogether urgent and persuasive.”
Michael Billington in the Guardian (four stars) – “Dramatic heroes are traditionally dogged by misfortune. But Arthur Miller, in this rarely-seen 1944 play, had the bright idea of writing about a man cursed by good luck. And, although it is intriguing for its intimations of later, greater Miller, it is striking how well it survives independently in Sean Holmes' invigorating revival … Through the narrative twists and turns, Miller is expressing his core philosophical belief: that a man has to take moral responsibility for his own life. Holmes' production, nicely pitched between reality and dream, is also very well acted. Andrew Buchan as David moves plausibly from youthful exuberance to mental disintegration under the curse of undeserved fortune while still convincing you the hero is a good man … But the pleasure of the evening lies in recognising the inherent quality while acknowledging the technical flaws. Even if the carpentry is visible, you can feel Miller exploring the theatrical terrain he was to make uniquely his own.”
Nicholas de Jongh in the Evening Standard (three stars) – “In Sean Holmes' dynamically charged production of Miller's first, rarely-revived, Broadway play, a work of confident immaturity, you witness a neurotic young garage owner, David Beeves, the balance of whose mind is disturbed by a surfeit of luck. Miller proposes it's absurd to live in wait for catastrophe and best to shape your own destiny … There is, though, an interesting vein of comic irony running through this fable-like play and which Holmes sometimes neglects. Good luck just will not leave Beeves alone … Andrew Buchan's Beeves maintains an air of bemused grace as fate rains down the blows of success upon him … It is difficult to be riveted by relentless outbursts of good fortune. Holmes' production, though he achieves high-wire tension in the scene of childbirth, stirs serious emotion only once. David's brother, Felix Scott's impressive Amos, whose life has been dedicated to becoming a professional baseball player, discovers his father's training has wrecked his chances. Scott weeps authentic tears and collapses - epitome of a man not controlling his own life. This is minor but intriguing Miller.”
Paul Taylor in the Independent – “In Sean Holmes' sincere and strongly committed revival at the Donmar, the play emerges as an intermittently powerful but awkward attempt to create a drama with myth-like elements (Miller aptly described it as ‘the obverse of the Book of Job’) … The fresh-faced, boyish Andrew Buchan plays David Beeves, a self-taught young car mechanic who, apparently as a result of a series of lucky flukes, gets the girl, the garage, the land, and the mink-breeding business. His unbroken run of good fortune is in sharp contrast to the blows suffered by others. Indeed, the most moving section of the play is the one that looks forward, in its focus on competitive siblings and paternal betrayal, to later Miller works such as All My Sons and Death of a Salesman … The play is a parable about the need to take personal responsibility. But the placid Buchan never seems sufficiently unhinged by the blessings that fall like blows and the play, which has its stodgy and laboriously explicit patches and is too evenly paced and repetitive, fails to develop a rhythm that might intensify our sense of his isolating nightmare.”
Charles Spencer in the Daily Telegraph – “Watching this rare revival, it is hard to understand why the piece was such a failure. It isn't in the same league as Miller's masterpieces, but Sean Holmes' fine production grips from the start and never lets go. Like so much of Miller's work, what initially appears to be a piece of slice-of-life naturalism also works powerfully as a moral fable, and the drama anticipates many of the dramatist's later themes, most significantly the vexed relationship between fathers and their sons … The great virtue of Holmes' production is that it puts flesh and blood on what might easily seem a glib little fable, so that you become engrossed in both plot and characters. Andrew Buchan's fresh-faced everyman hero manages to make the curse of good luck seem persuasive, Nigel Cooke has just the right twitchy, monomaniacal intensity as the father, while Felix Scott's howling anguish over his failed baseball career has a harrowing intensity. But there isn't a single weak performance in this fascinating play about the burning human need for a sense of justice in the universe.”
Arthur Miller’s fascinating early play The Man Who Had All the Luck lasted for only four performances on Broadway in 1944 but survives as a key play in the history of American drama, a play of post-War aspiration in a land of dreams and possibility.
Sean Holmes’s riveting and super-charged revival for the Donmar Warehouse is the third in Britain; Iain Glen starred in Paul Unwin’s glowingly picturesque Bristol Old Vic British premiere in 1980 and Michael Grandage presented David Hunt’s production at the end of his Sheffield Crucible tenure in 2001.
The story of David Beeves, a garage hand in a small mid-Western town who succeeds effortlessly as an agriculturalist, shop and quarry owner and mink farmer, has a rambling, novelistic feel to it, as Miller was still wavering between theatre and fiction.
This lends the play an uncertain, dream-like and fragmentary quality that now seems psychologically modern, even experimental. Everything goes David’s way to such an extent he begins to anticipate disaster. Although Miller revised the play’s ending in 1986 – David now committed suicide – the Donmar sticks to the original version.
There are some drastic narrative upheavals in the last two acts, but Holmes’s cast rides them like bronco bucks, especially Michelle Terry who is really outstanding as David’s wife Hester, whose baby nearly precipitates a domestic catastrophe but who pulls back from leaving home to start over again with almost impossible fervour and devotion.
Paul Wills’s impressive design of boards and beams – beautifully lit by Paule Constable – fully conveys the small town atmosphere of various domestic and garage locations. Once Hester’s cantankerous father (Roy Sampson) is fortuitously run over by the wealthy mink farmer (James Hayes), David meets a repair deadline in the garage thanks to the chance arrival of a passing Austrian (Shaun Dingwall) in the middle of the night. How weird is all that?
A magnificent vintage saloon car with a cream chassis and chocolate mudguards flies in as unexpectedly as the latest plot development. While Andrew Buchan’s likeably passive and good-natured David takes everything as it comes, his crusty old Dad (Nigel Cooke) dreams of the day when his second son Amos (Felix Scott) becomes a baseball star.
Here we see signs of Miller the author of All My Sons and Death of a Salesman, and the electricity really starts to flow when a talent scout (Gary Lilburn) drops by to shatter a few dreams and drive old Dad back on the road in search of his job as a ship’s cook.
Mark Lewis Jones as an expansive, drunken neighbour, Aidan Kelly as a bitter war veteran with a secret, and Sandra Voe as sweet old Aunt Belle, flesh out other areas of domestic tension. The playing is altogether urgent and persuasive and bodes well not only for the Donmar run but also for the tour next month to Salford, Liverpool and Truro.
I am not at all surprised to see two and three star ratings here. As usual the Donmar provided us with a great set so it was a big disappointment to discover what had been put into it didn't work. Dodgy accents apart there was some dodgy acting too. Not only did I feel distinctly uncaring towards the characters, but I also could not believe in any of them either. Superficially it had all the ingredients to make it work, but never quite took off - unlike an aerial car in the first act! To be fair I don't think Miller helped either. With uncharacteristically stodgy direction this was, for me, a unique experience at the Donmar - lets hope it stays that way. - rds
05 Apr 08
When I first saw this play at the Young Vic almost 20 years ago, I thought it was an interesting curiosity, worth a visit as part of my wish to see all Miller's plays, but not a great play. Well, this production turns that theory on its head. Last night I found much more depth in the play, well developed characters, and dramatic unpredictability; a much more mature work than I remembered and better than anything Miller produced after Broken Glass. Andrew Buchan is an excellent David, well supported in particular by Felix Scott as younger brother Amos, Aidan Kelly's Shory and Michelle Terry, who's Hester grows as the evening progresses. My only gripe is Mark Lewis Jones' accent which is all over the plaxce, but mostly in Swansea! Much more than a collector's item. - Gareth James
01 Apr 08
Mediocre production of a play best left gathering dust. The direction is plodding and too many of the performances under-powered with a selection of dodgy accents.Must do better! - joesmith
30 Mar 08
Miller was fascinated by a young man who appeared to have everything but who then committed suicide. This is a good theme but the play never seems to get to grips with it or the notions of fate, destiny, chance, so you emerge from the theatre feeling unsatisfied. The girl's father accuses David of being a hollow man but we see no evidence of this, nor is their much to support the statements that he is losing his mind at the end of the play. It's as if Miller was not sure what point he was making. The production and acting are as beautiful as they always are at the Donmar. - kilburncat
Re-opened in 1992. Seats 254. 1999 - Ambassador Theatre Group takes over from the Associated Capital Theatres as the landlord of the Donmar Warehouse. 2002 - Michael Grandage succeeds Sam Mendes as Artistic Director of the Donmar. Nick Frankfort succeeds Caro Newling as Executive Producer.
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