‘I’m saying there’s someone who could stop this madness. If you stood up, and said “no”.’
On a rainswept afternoon in 1952, Hollywood and Broadway’s leading director Elia Kazan met his closest collaborator, the playwright Arthur Miller. As the anti-Communist crusade of McCarthyism blacklisted hundreds of their colleagues, Kazan and Miller faced a stark choice. Should they betray their friends, or risk never working again?
David Edgar’s play Here in America is a compelling drama that imagines a confrontation between two giants of stage and screen, both passionately involved with an actress about to become the most famous movie star in the world. It was first performed at the Orange Tree Theatre, London, in 2024, directed by James Dacre.
‘Compelling and subtle… allows the audience to make up its own mind… cerebral and rewarding’
— The Times
‘A fascinating and fertile subject… captivating to watch… the comparisons we can draw with modern-day America are all too clear’
— Telegraph
‘An intriguing, knotty new drama about artists trying to survive in a time of political repression… Edgar ably captures his famous subjects’ complexities and contradictions, nailing their honed intellectualism and overweening egos… a taut, noirish mood of unspoken menace’
— The Stage
‘Intelligent writing… Edgar puts the emphasis on the personal, suggesting betrayals not only of political comrades but in personal life too… it held me right through its single 80-minute act’
— British Theatre Guide
