(Jane Shilling’s article appeared in the Telegraph, 12/11.)
Whatever fate the 20-year-old Arthur Miller envisaged for his first play, the notion that it would receive its world premiere in a north London pub-theatre, a century after his birth, would surely have struck him as exotic. In 1936, Miller was an impecunious student at the University of Michigan: a university playwriting competition offered a $250 prize, which Miller duly won.
His play was never published or produced, though Miller later described it as “the most autobiographical dramatic work I would ever write”. That enticing description was enough to send director Sean Turner to the University of Michigan archives, which furnished him with the neglected script.