US: Arthur Miller, a giant of 20th century theatre still working into the 21st century, died at his home in Connecticut, aged 89.
Tributes poured in from the international theatre community, which had somehow assumed the creator of an American archetype in Willy Loman, noble tragic hero of Death of a Salesman, would live and write forever.
"A great man of world theatre and a great American has passed away," said Garry Hynes, artistic director of the Galway-based Druid Theatre. "He was one of the playwrights who made the 20th century the American century," said British playwright David Hare last night. "When you think about American theatre it's Miller, Tennessee Williams, O'Neill - and now we've lost them all." Director Mike Leigh said: "I'm very, very sad. Death of a dramatist - what can you say." Nicholas Hytner, director of the UK National Theatre, who also directed the film of The Crucible, called him "the last of the great titans of the American stage".
He said: "With Eugene O'Neill and Tennessee Williams he brought to the English speaking theatre a poetic urgency and tragic sweep that had been absent since the Elizabethan era. His models were the great classical tragedians and, more recently, Ibsen; and I have no doubt that plays like Death of a Salesman, The Crucible, and A View from the Bridge will always stand with the masterpieces of Ibsen, Shakespeare and Sophocles." Film and stage director David Thacker said: "There is no playwright as great as Shakespeare, but if you leave Shakespeare out of the frame, he is as great as any writer in the history of playwriting."
Miller died of heart failure on Thursday night, a week after he was sent home from hospital.
The New York Post reported that among the family and friends who gathered at his bedside as it became clear he would lose his fight against cancer, a heart condition and pneumonia, was his girlfriend, the painter Agnes Barley (34). "We're sort of just holding together here as a family," his son Robert said. His daughter, Rebecca, who is married to actor Daniel Day-Lewis, has a home in Co Wicklow.
Miller's personal life, including a brief, stormy marriage to sex symbol Marilyn Monroe, often captivated America and his left-wing political views made him a target of the House of Representatives un-American Activities Committee in the 1950s.