The idea of the “common man” as tragic hero is central to Arthur Miller’s greatest plays: someone who is “ready to lay down his life, if need be, to secure one thing – his sense of personal dignity”. In theory, longshoreman Marty Ferrara (Jamie Sives), standing up to the waterfront’s union gangsters in the Red Hook district of New York, embodies this description. Ferrara is the hero of a screenplay Miller presented to Hollywood’s Columbia Pictures in 1951 (three years before On the Waterfront was released and with the same director, Elia Kazan, on board). Miller refused to accept politically motivated changes and the film was never produced. Now, the story appears for the first time in this stage adaptation by playwright Ron Hutchinson, working from versions of Miller’s script and notes collated by director James Dacre, and “using only Arthur Miller’s language and narrative structure”.
Is it a lost masterpiece? On this evidence, no. The subject matter has lost its bite. Attacking union corruption and zero-hours hiring practices may have appeared radical in the 1950s, here it comes across as a justification for Maggie (“Thank heavens we broke ’em!”). The production (joint with Liverpool Everyman & Playhouse) plays like an old-fashioned melodrama: a paint-by-numbers plot in atmospheric settings, moodily lit and emotionally pumped by sound and music. Characters are types, splendidly rendered by the company (in spite of dodgy accents), but lacking dramatic depth. Miller lite!
• The Hook is at Royal & Derngate, Northampton until 27 June, then tours
