Arthur Miller has set this devastating play inside a mind. The mind belongs to Quentin, a lawyer with a lofty reputation and a prosecutor's zeal for pursuing the finest threads of guilt. Yet the guilt that most obsesses Quentin is his own: his guilt as son and husband, friend, lover, and man. And in the course of his plunge through the labyrinths of consciousness and conscience, Quentin will be joined by several hostile witnesses -- from the partner he abandoned to the beautiful, childlike wife he couldn't save. Masterly in its orchestration, searing in its candor, After the Fall is a victory of the moral imagination. Book jacket.

Whitney Houston, illustrated biography.

THE STORY: A Man enters a small boutique, hoping to find a suitable gift for his young mistress, who is facing a grave operation. Unaccountably he quickly finds himself confiding in the Proprietress, speaking without hesitation of the pain he feels at having his telephone calls to his loved one unreturned, of his fear that her condition may be fatal. The Proprietress consoles him, suggesting that perhaps she wants to spare him, that she needs to face her ordeal alone and without added burden that his involvement would impose. As they speak specters of other deep-seated concerns arise: the difference in age between the Man and his mistress; his unfulfilling marriage; the emptiness of material success without love to enrich it; the void that might have been filled had there been the possibility of children; the frustration of being unable to make a true and total commitment to another person. It is almost as though the Proprietress might be-or has become-the absent mistress. As the play ends the Man and the Proprietress embrace, two strangers grateful for the small miracle which, if only for a brief moment, has let them share closeness always hoped for but seldom achieved.

THE STORY: Angela, a hard-bitten call-girl, is visited by Tom, a private detective of long acquaintance, who is convinced that she can supply information about a murder case which, some years earlier, resulted in a miscarriage of justice. As Tom plays on their former closeness, trying to draw out the facts he seeks, Angela withdraws behind a schizophrenic screen of multiple personalities ranging from a brazen creature named Leontyne, to a shrinking violet called Emily, to a haughty English-woman named Renata. Doggedly persistent, Tom does, in the end, break through the fears which have driven Angela to hide the truth within herself. With chilling intensity she pours through a tale of duplicity and corruption and recounts how an innocent man ended up paying for the crimes of others. As the play ends Tom offers to drive Angela to her next assignation-relieved that his quest has ended but, at the same time, disturbed by the knowledge that his worst fears have been borne out.