Disappointment. The word echoes disconsolately throughout Arthur Miller’s play about the causes of mental illness, the struggles between men and women, between workers and capitalists and between what we expect and what we are given in life.
In the waiting room of a New England psychiatric hospital, two men converse about their wives who are struggling with depression and addiction to prescription drugs. Once ‘the handsomest pair in town’, Patty and her carpenter husband, Leroy, a descendent of Alexander Hamilton but who is now living below his social class, have struggled financially to raise seven children. Patty has been in and out of institutions for years but has finally managed to rid herself of drugs for the first time and is finding a euphoric solace in God. The Fricks, by contrast, are a wealthy, childless couple and the successful businessman husband can’t understand why his formerly dutiful wife, Karen, ‘a woman who has everything she could possibly want’, is no longer happy and optimistic. This is Karen’s first time in an institution and she is drugged up to the point of no longer being able to follow a simple, single train of thought.
Despite being premiered in 1993, The Last Yankee still seems a microcosm of the depressive state of the American nation, which has moved so far away from the vision of its founding fathers. The play has been referred to as ’more anecdotal than dramatic’, and it’s true that there is no visual drama - apart from the painful and fragile moments when Karen, in top hat and tails, tries to tap dance to win the attention and approval of her husband, who has previously ignored her efforts. (An unexpectedly beautiful moment came when a few women in the audience spontaneously applauded Karen’s joyful execution of the steps.)
The small cast, Juliet Aubrey, Patrick Poletti, David Ricardo-Pearce and Annie Tyson, give rich and nuanced performances - Aubrey in particular, with her tortured, pained looks, swinging from insecurity to doubt and then elation, is riveting.
The play thoughtfully, deftly and satisfyingly allows the audience to choose where their sympathies lie and to decide who or what is to blame for the mental illness of two very different women; is it childlessness, too many children, poverty, too much idle wealth, a partner’s obliviousness to a spouse’s needs and desires or a combination of a myriad of pressure points?
In the hospital, the damaged women find solace in each other and nurture, admire and support, in a cocoon away from a world of let-downs and free of male judgement and their husbands’ selfish lifestyle choices: here they are able to regain some of their playful, pre-marriage selves. Miller, here, proves to be an unexpected feminist.
It’s often said that Miller’s later plays are the lesser ones, but whilst The Last Yankee is less dramatically ostentatious and overtly passionate than his earlier works, it’s more grown up about the realities of compromise and muddling through with those you love. There is no clear resolution or happy ending. Patty has repeatedly returned to hospital; who says that this time will break that cycle? And for first-timer Karen, her future is cloudy. And finally, when everyone departs, there is still a woman lying on a bed, inert & silent, who was present, almost imperceptibly, the whole time and who we don’t know & who will never leave.
Under the expert and delicate direction of old-hand Miller collaborator & director David Thacker, this is an assured, quiet but powerful production where almost every utterance has a variety of readings and possibilities, and the tiny Bolton Library Theatre - an intimate space, where you cannot evade emotional engagement with or intellectual understanding of the characters – only amps up its impact.
Reviewer - Tracy Ryan
on - 5/3/19
such an amazing piece of art. I love it!
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