August 8, 2016

Calm dim morning, the gleam of various rains emerging on the pavements. Lotus blooming on the distant edge of the garden means there will have to be a pilgrimage.
   
Sunday morning holed up in my studio. Thinking of Jason. Thinking of the lessons of the Old Masters he had for me, what stuck in mind.
   
Drove between the deluges (the welcome deluges) to Waynesville to see Steve’s cherished All My Sons. I had never seen it before, and if I’d read it, I remembered it badly. Turns out to be the masterpiece everybody says it is. Sophoclean. Were Miller alive, I’d want to discuss with him the gunshot at the end. Is that maybe too Greek? A way of ending action without actually bringing it to a close? Not convictions on my part, but questions. The performances were what I most value on the stage– clarity, purity from mannerism and too-evident “interpretation”–the sheerest of all possible curtains through which the spirit if the drama may be glimpsed. Worth the journey several times over. The two best productions in my recent history have been MT’s The Death of Salesman and HART’s All My Sons. Fortune, or maybe Miller, whom too many over-indulged Will Lomans had, perhaps, caused me to underrate.