The Man Who Had All the Luck Read Online Free Page A

reviewed.
    There was a further staged reading in Los Angeles, in 2000, and then a production the following year at the Williamstown Festival in Massachusetts, with Chris O’Donnell as David Beeves. It was this production that reached Broadway in 2002, fifty-eight years after the play’s precipitate failure. This time The New York Times, which had dismissed it in 1944, welcomed it as “compelling” and asked how it could ever have been so easily dismissed over half a century earlier. The Man Who Had All the Luck had finally arrived.
    NOTES
    1 . Arthur Miller, Timebends (London, 1987), pp. 90-91.
    2 . Ibid., p. 105.
    3 . Ibid.
    4 . Program note of Bristol Old Vic and Young Vic production.
    5 . Arthur Miller,“Afterword,” The Golden Years and The Man Who Had All the Luck (London, 1989), p. 231.
    6 . Arthur Miller, “Introduction,” The Golden Years and The Man Who Had All the Luck, pp. 8, 10.
    7 . Mel Gussow, “Life, He Thought, Meant Waiting for One Bad Thing,” The New York Times, April 28, 2002, Arts, p. 9.
    8 . Miller, Timebends, pp. 104-5.
    9 . Program note of Bristol Old Vic and Young Vic production.

Cast
    DAVID BEEVES
    Â 

SHORY
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J.B. FELLER
ANDREW FALK
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PATTERSON (PAT) BEEVES
AMOS BEEVES
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HESTER FALK
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DAN DIBBLE
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GUSTAV EBERSON
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AUGIE BELFAST
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AUNT BELLE
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    Â 
    The Time Not so long ago.

Act One
    Scene i An evening in early April. Inside a barn used as a repair shop.
    Scene ii The barn, near dawn.

Act Two
    Scene i June. About three years later. The living room of the Falks’—now David’s—house.
    Scene ii Later that day. The living room.

Act Three
    Scene i The following February. The living room.
    Scene ii One month later. The living room at evening.

ACT ONE

Scene i
    A barn in a small, midwestern town. It is set on a rake angle. The back wall of the barn sweeps toward upstage and right, and the big entrance doors are in this wall. Along the left wall a work bench on which auto tools lie along with some old parts and rags and general mechanic’s junk. A rack over the bench holds wrenches, screwdrivers, other tools. In the left wall is a normal-sized door leading into Shory’s Feed and Grain Store to which this barn is attached. A step-high ramp leads down from the threshold of this door into the barn. Further to the left, extending into the offstage area along the wall, are piles of cement bags. In front of them several new barrels that contain fertilizer.
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    Downstage, near the center, is a small wood stove, now glowing red. Over the bench is a hanging bulb. There is a big garage jack on the floor, several old nail barrels for chairs—two of them by the stove. A large drum of alcohol lies on blocks, downstage right. Near it are scattered a few gallon tins. This is an old barn being used partly as a storage place, and mainly as an auto repair shop. The timber supports have a warm, oak color, unstained. The colors of wood dominate the scene, and the grey of the cement bags.
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    Before the rise, two car horns, one of them the old-fashioned ga-goo-ga type of the old Ford, are heard honking impatiently. An instant of this and the curtain rises.
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    DAVID BEEVES is filling a can from an alcohol drum. He is twenty-two. He has the earnest manner of the young, small-town businessman until he forgets it, which is most of the time. Then he becomes what he is—wondrous, funny, naïve, and always searching. He wears a windbreaker.
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    Enter J.B. FELLER from the right. He is a fat man near fifty, dressed for winter. A certain delicacy of feeling clings to his big face. He has a light way of walking despite his weight.
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    J.B.: Sure doing nice business on that alcohol, huh David? [ Thumbing right ] They’re freezing out there, better step on it.
    DAVID: Near every car in town’s been here today for some. April! What a laugh!
    J.B. [ nods downstage ]: My store got so cold I had to