The Archbishop’s Ceiling by Arthur Miller

At this point, I think I’ve read most (if not most, then a very very very big chunk) of the plays of renowned actor and Einstein-level genius (according to lots of Boomer-aged dads) Marilyn Monroe’s one-time squeeze, Arthur Miller.

This one, though, is a late career piece and a little bit outside of the era when at the height of his powers…

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When Arthur Miller was at his best, he was able to write plays whose very titles told a story, or at least evoked an image, a meaning, a soul…

Death of a Salesman gives you a narrative and a character…

A View from the Bridge clarifies the importance of location and place to a narrative and evokes a mien of people, a cast of characters, who live somewhere where there is a bridge that has become “the” bridge – these are people dominated either by a bridge that is significant in meaning, or people who live somewhere small and closed where there is only one bridge … Even the provincial nightmare where I grew up had more than one bridge, y’know… Whatever direction you project from the title, something is spoken…

Incident at Vichy immediately brings to thought horror and war and corruption and the collapse of resistance…

while The Crucible is a shorter, terser, title that gives away little but yet still says something about a time, something about holding, something about size, something about growth and language and meandering and storytelling and… I dunno about that one, actually, maybe I’m projecting lol…

This play, then, immediately screams that something is off from the fucking start…

The Archbishop’s Ceiling sounds like a fucking 1970s farce.

It sounds like a euphemism (though god knows for what…)

It sounds like a pissed out half-idea of a title… Not only, as a title, does it lack clarity, but it also lacks poetry, it lacks finesse, it lacks a “je ne sais quoi” – I don’t know what that means or what it lacks – but there is definitely something absent, something that the younger Arthur Miller spunked up onto every page and into every title with an effortless élan… (I also don’t know what “élan” means.)

This sense, this absence, then, is matched by the text, which – aside from a few excellent bon mots and some classic mid-century sleaze that feel forced in (see an example of each below), as if Miller wrote a handful of good lines that he felt needed to be included in this otherwise underwhelming script – the whole thing feels a little… Flat.

Flat.

Flat.

Flat.

The Archbishop’s Ceiling (¡ooh-err!) is about an American writer meeting some friends of his in an Eastern European city that’s part of the Soviet bloc, and one of his friends – Marcus – has been embraced by the Soviet regime and enjoys a cushy life of travel and acclaim while the other – Sigmund – is acclaimed internationally as a great talent but is broadly seen to be against the regime so is now impoverished and on the edge of arrest for dissidence etc..

The American writer tries to persuade Sigmund to leave the country, and everyone else agrees it’s probably for the best, but it seems, by the end, like he probably won’t…

The room they are meeting in – in a former palace of the archbishop – may or may not have bugs (as in small radio microphone devices) hidden in the ceiling, transmitting their every word to the secret police. But this might also be a rumour. Nobody knows…

As well as these three men, there’s also a sexy woman – Maya – who all three of them have previously shagged (who may or may not be a regime agent, and all of them patronisingly treat as a “muse” rather than as a person (though maybe that’s Miller rather than his middle aged “boy writer” characters doing that, but who knows?)), as well as a second sexy woman – Irina – who is much younger than the rest of them and is the wife of the Danish ambassador or something, and her presence either adds little to the text (i.e. I think the role is essentially just “attractive young woman is on the stage”) or I missed something significant while reading…

But, yeah, The Archbishop’s Ceiling is all about, like, censorship and freedom of expression or whatever, about the importance of truth and honour and stuff like that, and basically how (not really true) literature is like the most important thing in the world, maaaan etc etc etc

I mean, literature is the most important thing for me (and why the mere snatched engagement with it I get while commuting and reading/blogging is one of the reasons why I’m sooooooo miserable; I gotta prioritise the written word), but I’m a nothing person, a flim flam bit of fluff fluttering in the gusts of other people’s world and society. The arts aren’t important to the people with power. And the people with power… Have all the power.

Is this a good play? I mean, it’s not unreadable, but can I imagine anyone bothering to stage this ever again? Also, no.

It’s fine, but it’s slight. There’s a gushing afterword by Christopher Bigsby (no idea who that is), which states that the play maybe has more going for it than I understood, with particular late seventies references that millennial scott manley hadley (me) would never have picked up on… 

Ultimately, I do think it’s fine for a work of art to become irrelevant after 50 years, but when compared to some of Miller’s timeless entries to the literary canon, this one is definitely a disappointment…

Still, onwards onwards ever onwards…

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one example bon mot and one example of Miller sleaze:

“that is the problem in the theatre – I believe everything but am convinced of nothing.”

“I’ll never forget you in that real short skirt you wore last time, and the moment when you slung one leg over the arm of the chair. You have a sublime sluttishness, Maya – don’t be mad, it’s a gift when it’s sublime.”