After the Fall

While it is respectable that the play tries to reach for all these concepts, takes a surprisingly self-critical examination as to the entire situation between Miller and Monroe as a thinly veiled allegory, taking this play on its face value - it's just bad.

The story being told out of order stymies so much of the emotional impact as there is not much of a reason for it to be out of chronology; as the reader tries to piece the story together, it flips into another subplot, and then another. Confusion does not enhance the experience - there is no need for it to be frantically confusing aside from Miller probably wanting to put all the emotional beats together all at once to make the protagonist seem even more miserable than he already was. It only makes the story more opaque and distances the reader from the characters even more.

The story is so maudlin and melodramatic, tastelessly touching on the concepts of the Holocaust and then The Red Scare, just to add to the fact that this is a “serious” story that no one is allowed to critique only for it to pivot about a relationship drama between two awful people. If this is a thinly veiled allegory for how Miller treated Monroe - it is no apology, but rather a self-flagellation for his behavior. And yet it still has the audacity to tacitly place some blame on Monroe for her death - just absolutely narcissistic and disrespectful to the situation.