Then we’re whisked to a New York speakeasy where the mood is jittery – giants of industry stare into the abyss while pampered innocents dimly sense the ground shaking beneath them: “I sat down in the dining car, absolutely famished, and realised I had only 40 cents!” chirps the sister of a broker who – as yet unbeknownst to her – has jumped from a tall building. An entire system – founded on quasi religious belief – has fallen off the cliff-edge.
First performed in 1980, a flop on Broadway, the piece serves as a warning from history (the type that’s seldom heeded) and it draws from Hard Times (1970), an anthology of first-hand accounts of the period, collated by Studs Terkel. But there’s nothing dusty or dutifully clock-watching about it. The book is a montage of memories, and Miller took a leaf out of its non-episodic nature to jump and leap about. He billed the show as a “vaudeville”, likened it to a mural – and that gives him a means of pushing out across the nation, giving voice to a chorus of bewilderment, as the banks fail, the bailiffs call, the crops rot, and the air hangs heavy with resentment and revolutionary fervour. Yet swimming amid the tide of acrimony, there’s stoical humour, resilient American optimism and even young romantic love.