Arthur Miller's Century: Essays Celebrating the 100th Birthday of America's Great Playwright ed. by Stephen Marino (review)

The centennial of Arthur Miller's birth generated renewed conversations about the artist's plays, stories, and life. In the introduction, editor Stephen Marino describes this essay collection as a "Festschrift" (xvii). He recounts numerous 2015 productions of Miller's work mounted globally and the ways theatres and academic institutions reflected on the playwright's contributions to literature and theatre. Exhibitions, documentaries, tributes, readings, and academic conferences were components of this yearlong celebration, including the Miller Centennial Conference in Brooklyn hosted by St. Francis College, an event from which many of this book's eighteen chapter-long essays originated. The new critical treatments collected in this text illuminate Miller scholarship, which has long covered topics such as writing methods, US productions, biography, and literary analysis. While the aim of a number of scholars in this publication is to investigate similar subjects, several chapters draw comparisons between Miller and the conventions and themes of other authors and focus on Miller as a political and cultural figure with global reach. These parallels between Miller and others across literary history demonstrate the remarkable breadth, significance, and artistry of his work. The book's signature impressions are the chapters seeking to broaden contemporary scholarship by examining global impacts and the roles of women in Miller's life and plays. The interdisciplinary smorgasbord of critical approaches evidences the sweeping importance of Miller even as it ushers in—to borrow from Brian Mazeski—"a new wave of Miller criticism" (57).

An example of this "new wave" is Ramón Espejo Romero's call for freshly conceived paradigms devoted to the global reception of American drama on the world stage. His chapter, "From 'Universal' to 'Global' Miller: Re-Writing the History of American Drama (Historian at Work)," expertly models this approach with a description and analysis of three play productions over a thirteen-year period in Madrid (1952-1965) in which the scripts were censored-in-translation at the expense of Miller's subject matter and themes. This historical recouping, "outside their original milieu" and viewed against Spain's history at the time the plays were staged, allows for an "opening up" of unexplored areas for both theatre and literary studies (49-50).

Stefani Koorey and Susan C. W. Abbotson's contributions provide distinctively feminist perspectives on Miller's work. While articles and books on Miller's three marriages and on his women characters are readily available, feminist analysis of Miller's plays is in short supply. In "Arthur Miller Unzipped," Koorey writes: "in all of his major dramatic works, Miller fabricates his female characters to serve the dramas of his decidedly masculine protagonists" (94). Koorey notes Miller's real-life performance for the media on the day he appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee during which he announced his upcoming second marriage to Marilyn Monroe, which "upstag[ed] Miller's otherwise controversial performance before the Committee" (92). Monroe said it is "awfully nice of him to let me know of his plans" (Donald Spoto qtd. in Koorey 92). Koorey's feminist approach provides an innovative reading of Miller even as she incorporates, yet broadens, the range of Miller criticism beyond mere biography.

While this book gives little mention of Miller's first marriage to Mary Slattery, Susan C. W. Abbotson provides an astutely researched biographical sketch of Miller's forty-five year relationship with Inge Morath. Abbotson describes the couple's book collaborations across the landscapes of Connecticut, Russia, and China in which Morath supplied photographs and Miller wrote text. While their daughter, Rebecca Miller, profiled her parents in a 2018 HBO special and Linda Gordon published a 2018 biography on Morath, Abbotson's treatment of Morath's photography and her impact on Miller's art and legacy precedes these more recent publications and is a principal contribution to the book through a feminist reading that provides deeper insight into...