Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.A little way into Here in America, one character is recalling the theatre technique of “affective memory”: “It’s called ‘the magic if’. What you’d do if it was you.”Like much in David Edgar’s new play about Arthur Miller and Elia Kazan, it’s not an idle reference. What you would do if it were you is a question that rolls through so many of Miller’s plays — All My Sons, A View from the Bridge, Death of a Salesman — as the protagonists grapple with integrity and the battle between principle and personal interest. Miller’s genius was that he could show you why someone might make the wrong choice. That question also drives Edgar’s drama, which finds both Miller, and his legendary director Kazan, in a similarly agonising position. “What would you do?” they essentially ask of each other — and of the audience. Edgar focuses on 1952 and a critical meeting between the writer and director at the latter’s home in Connecticut. Tense and twitchy, Kazan is trying to find a way to tell Miller, a man he regards almost as a brother, that he intends to name names to Senator McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee. He wants Miller to understand him. (In reality, his decision caused a huge rift between the two). Edgar uses dramatic licence to imagine the conversation. It’s easiest, naturally, to root for Miller, who refused to name names, but Edgar adds subtle moral shading. Shaun Evans’ agonised, restless Kazan asks urgently why he should ruin his career for a cause he no longer believes in; Michael Aloni’s watchful, sharp Miller, in turn, has driving clarity but also a degree of lofty superiority. Questions of loyalty and betrayal — personal, political, marital — come thick and fast. And the real target here is the paranoid political hysteria that has forced artists into impossible decisions. As the script touches on blacklisting, on divisive public discourse and on the banning of books in libraries, it’s clear that Edgar’s wider concern is the direction of travel of present-day America.It’s fascinating and highly pertinent, then, and James Dacre’s taut, precisely acted production makes the most of the intimate Orange Tree Theatre, with the arguments slicing the air and the two men prowling the space warily, like caged animals. Jasmine Blackborow’s fragile Marilyn Monroe floats through as a spectral, imagined presence, nagging at the men’s consciences, while Faye Castelow as Kazan’s shrewd wife Molly needles and prompts. It’s held back somewhat by the weight of exposition it has to pack in and by its cerebral nature. Meanwhile, the interplay of memory and guilt, while aptly reflecting Miller’s technique in Salesman, is complex to pull off on stage. Even so, this feels a timely piece for our rancorous times: a reminder of the fragility and importance of artistic and intellectual freedom. ★★★☆☆To October 19, orangetreetheatre.co.uk
