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Why did I break down when Arthur Miller died? This is the dramatic question this playwright attempts to answer in this essay. My emotional attachment to Miller began when New York's New Dramatists sent me to observe rehearsals of Miller's original Broadway production of The Price. It grew when I saw Miller's comic side while meeting him in his producer's office. I was overwhelmed when I saw the first Kazan “operatic” production of Salesman. Dealing with Miller personally when I initiated the Arthur Miller Award at the University of Michigan was intensely affecting. And the intensity of my respect for him reached new depths while presenting my paper on fashioning an epic theater piece from his memoir, Timebends. Unquestionably Miller's political activism and his dramatic writing techniques shaped my own. Did the convergence of all these Miller events in my memory explain why I broke down when Arthur Miller died? Yes!

[Arthur Miller], at his best, documented the failure of the American Dream; here he is simply charting the time-bending dreams of an individual. The result, while psychologically accurate, is stubbornly undramatic. Not even Michael Blakemore's atmospheric production or Peter J Davison's set, which turns Manhattan's concrete canyons into a dissolving hall of mirrors, can compensate for the absence of internal tension. One is left admiring John Cullum's craggy, intransigent selfhood as this latterday Prospero, the dutiful support of Nicholas Woodeson as the Grouchoesque brother and of Jan Waters as [Harry Peters]'s ex-Rockette wife. But what you finally get is a jagged journey through Miller's psyche rather than an authentic dramatic event.

JANUARY (pg. 285-290). FEBRUARY (pg. 290-294). MARCH (pg. 294-300). APRIL (pg. 301-306). MAY (pg. 306-311). JUNE (pg. 311-316). JULY (pg. 316-324). AUGUST (pg. 324-333). SEPTEMBER (pg. 333-338). OCTOBER (pg. 338-345). NOVEMBER (pg. 345-349). DECEMBER (pg. 349-354). INDIA (pg. 354-379). IN THE PERSIAN EXPEDITION (pg. 379). DECEMBER, 1856 (pg. 379). CENTENARIANS (pg. 380).

Contrary to the title, Mr. [Peter's] -- a former Pan Am airline pilot, but otherwise an authorial alter ego -- does not make many connections. Rather, he has wandered into a crummy old nightclub and proceeds to confront a plethora of memories -- from the sweetness of a pleasurable childhood desert to the pain of a beautiful but troubled ex-wife (guess who). People arrive at the club and try to engage Mr. Peters, and presumably Mr. [Arthur Miller], in subjects of which he has little or no comprehension.