“The Man Who Had All the Luck” debuted in 1944 as the 29-year-old Arthur Miller’s first Broadway play, and closed four nights later.
It has taken the American theater 56 years to stage a revival. We are indebted to the Antaeus Company and director Dan Fields for giving the play a second chance and assembling a fine corps of actors to breathe new life into the plot-heavy but gripping drama.
Set in small-town America during the 1930s Depression years, the play’s title character is David Beeves, a young auto mechanic and all-around nice guy.
Beeves has one problem. Without any visible effort on his part, fate favors him at every step. When the father of David’s intended blocks any marriage plans, he is conveniently killed in a car crash. When he is stumped by a crucial car repair task, a stranger materializes at five in the morning and solves the problem. When he buys a gas station on a back road, the state decides to build a highway alongside.
Miller has said that he wrote “All the Luck” as “a kind of myth … that pays attention to the process of fate,” and he posits in the play that excessive good fortune can unhinge a man as easily as overwhelming misfortune.
Beeves becomes obsessed by the belief that a great catastrophe is in store for him to even things out. But when fate’s anticipated blow — the stillbirth or deformity of his first child — is again transformed into a blessing, Beeves’s mind begins to teeter on the edge of insanity.
Miller has said that he wrestled for years whether to give the play a happy ending or opt for a Greek tragedy touch by having the hero commit suicide. In the end, the happy ending won out.
Besides its intrinsic value, the play is of interest as a forerunner of ideas and situations Miller developed more dramatically in later works. Most apparent are the brother-brother and father-son conflicts, a warm-up to “All My Sons” and “Death of a Salesman.”
In the title role, Paul Gutrecht, with his open-faced, all-American-boy looks and demeanor, leads a cast of talented professionals, including Mark Doerr as his hapless brother, Kellie Waymire as his beloved, Mitch Carter as a cynical and crippled World War I vet, and Tegan West as David’s friend.
Housing the production is the Ivy Substation, a former electric power station in Culver City, but thanks to the sparse and effective scenic design by Katherine Ferwerda, the unlikely venue enhances the mood of the play. The Antaeus Company plans to move into its own theater in North Hollywood in the near future.
“The Man Who Had All the Luck” is scheduled for a limited run, Thursday-Sundays, through May 21, at the Ivy Substation, 9070 Venice Blvd., Culver City. For information, phone (818) 506-8462.
