Recommended by Robert Brewer
This short play by legendary playwright Miller is about Lyman Felt, a man who has lied all his life, coming face to face with his two wives at the same time, for the first time.
The play circles around Lyman, confined to a hospital bed, forced to reveal the truth to his wives. Theo - the first wife of over 20 years - stable, genuine, and the mother of Lyman’s child Bessie, and Leah - young, attractive, and restless.
Intertwining present with past memories, Miller puts across effectively the web that compulsive liar Lyman has made. Lyman has another child with Leah, Benjamin, who, like Bessie, utterly worships his father. He is a man whom everyone seems to fall in love with, a man with more life in him than anybody - his charm, his power, his hunger. There are points at which the reader wonders if either Leah or Theo will take Lyman back, such is the great hold he has on them after years of deception.
When they all meet in the hospital waiting room Lyman has been married to Leah for the past nine years, lying to her that he has divorced Theo. It seems he can’t even bring himself to be honest, he calls the truth ‘terrible’ - Miller introduces us to the time when Lyman planned to tell Theo the truth and divorce her, but he simply can’t. He lies because he loves both women too much.
Miller and his first wife, Mary Grace Slattery, and their daughter, Jane
“I want to stop lying. It’s simple”: in the final scene of the play, Lyman must simply justify himself to two woman whom he has utterly broken. Lyman outpours his love and blesses all the women, saying goodbye. He knows the game is up, and laments over his ‘condemned soul’. In the final moments of the play, Lyman has been honest, and its his honesty has left him alone, where he exclaims he has ‘found Lyman at last’ (in loneliness).
Miller and his second wife, Marilyn Monroe
Miller’s late play presents the difficulty between honesty with others and with ourselves, and teaches us the lesson to be honest, but that once we start lying it is easier to continue doing so. Lyman’s name embodies the condemnation he feels, ‘lie - man’, and his downfall is exactly this : he loves too much to be honest.
Miller and his third wife, photographer Inge Morath
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