The Man Who Had All the Luck

Published Monday 10 March 2008 at 13:25 by Aleks Sierz

Is it possible to be too lucky? Ask David Beeves, the central character of Arthur Miller’s 1944 flop, a great play now enjoying a rare revival in Sean Holmes’s warm and vigorous production. From humble beginnings, Beeves has the good fortune to marry his childhood sweetheart, and then succeeds first as a mechanic and then as a mink breeder. But his good luck contrasts bitterly with his own brother’s failure to become a baseball star.

Although this is an early work, you not only get hints of Miller’s future genius but also of his consummate theatrical imagination, and especially his sense of tragedy. The playwright’s belief in personal responsibility and moral sturdiness are very much in evidence, as is his focus on parents who try too hard to improve their offspring. Miller, you feel, was clearly writing out his own personal obsessions.

On designer Paul Wills’s versatile, wooden-planked and sturdy set, Holmes’s production brings out the thrilling humanism at the heart of Miller’s play. As David Beeves, Andrew Buchan turns in a performance that gives sincerity a very good name. But, gradually, his sunny honesty turns into puzzled agony. By contrast, his brother, played by Felix Scott, reacts to adversity with convincingly devastated bitterness.

Great support also from Michelle Terry as David’s emotionally intelligent wife and Shaun Dingwall as their charming and sensible friend. Not for the last time, Miller explores the splendours and miseries of the American Dream, and gives a fascinating account, with a surprisingly moving and nail-biting ending, of the pressures of family life and sibling rivalry. This is also a superb picture of the fragility of human happiness.