The pairing of the eminent playwright, 80, with Mr. Elliott, 33, the director of three critically acclaimed Off Broadway productions in the last 15 months, might seem unexpected, even quirky. Certainly, landing the American premiere of Mr. Miller's "Ride Down Mount Morgan" is a coup for the Williamstown Theater Festival, best known for staging classics and unknown new plays.

"Scott's a very contemporary guy; I like that," the playwright said. Mr. Miller had mentioned his admiration for Mr. Elliott's work to their mutual agent, Sam Cohn at ICM, who engineered the collaboration. "Scott's full of energy and drive, and I still have some of that myself. It's O.K. to have one old guy around, but not too many. I don't like to feel I'm dragging the director around."

"The Ride Down Mount Morgan," first produced in London five years ago, runs from Wednesday through July 28 on the festival's mainstage. The London production, directed by Michael Blakemore with Tom Conti in the central role, had left Mr. Miller unsatisfied, he said. It received mixed reviews at the time.

"The play is really a kind of nightmare," Mr. Miller explained. "It ought to flow rapidly and effortlessly from one moment to another. In London, we had difficulty with the set, which required too much effort to move around. Having gotten the benefit of seeing it done once, I wanted to work on the script, to make it sharper and more pointed."

His protagonist, Lyman, played by Mr. Abraham, has been in a car crash and broken all his limbs. Throughout much of the play, Lyman lies in bed while his wife (Michael Learned) bickers with a younger woman (Patricia Clarkson) he has married without bothering to get a divorce.

As Mr. Elliott watched his actors rehearse, Mr. Abraham suddenly slipped out of the bed and stood behind it. "Lie down!" he commanded. As if in a trance, the two women leaped onto the bed, reclining side by side. Mr. Abraham's voice was so forceful that even Ms. Learned's Boston bull terrier, Paloma, scampered up and snuggled between the two women.

Except for Paloma, everything about the scene derived from Mr. Miller's script, which may surprise those who only think of the playwright as a master of serious naturalistic dramas like "Death of a Salesman" and "The Crucible."

"This play is similar to an acid trip," said Mr. Elliott, "and that's the way I'm staging it. I'm turning it into this subconscious exploration of an ego, the ego of a man who wants it all and doesn't really worry about how it's going to affect anybody else."

New York Times, July 14, 1996

  
theatre | music | arts | men and sex