Marxist Shmarxist

Last week I visited the Old Red Lion to catch up with a production of Arthur Miller's first - but as yet unproduced - play, No Villain. Completed in six days, the play was written out of necessity with the aim of winning the 1936 Avery Hopwood Award, which was a cash prize of $250 - the equivalent today of about £4250.00. The money would allow the young sophomore student to return to college the following year but the play was never produced - until now.

It's an old adage but sage advice to new playwrights to 'write what you know' and this is certainly true of No Villain. Miller's first play explores Marxist theory through the story of the Simon family, a once comfortable immigrant household who have fallen on leaner times following the Great Depression. A strike threatens the foreclosure of Abe's garment factory, and while his two sons wrangle over the future of their legacy, life happens.

It's fascinating to watch this play, knowing the future of Miller's work. For all the political theorising and traditional beliefs that shape plays such as, View From A Bridge, Death of a Salesman or The Crucible, it's the human element that holds our interest. How we love - either as family or community - is as important to Miller's work as how we think and it is the interplay between the three generations of the Simon family that make No Villain such a gem.

 

It's certainly not perfect and I can't help but agree with Tom Wicker's review in The Stage, that we are "left wanting more from the conflict". Either way, full marks to the cast and crew that made such a landmark play so eminently watchable. At one point I wanted to get up and deliver the coats myself, but that might have been frowned upon.