What’s the Secret, Ben?
This play is a take-off on
Arthur Miller’s play Death of a Salesman. It does not deal with Willy Loman and his family. Rather it is the development of Willy’s brother Ben and his life in Africa before his death. In Miller’s play, Ben, who has been dead, appears as a ghost in Willy’s desperate hallucinations. In Willy’s conversation with his neighbor Charley, the audience learns that Ben had seven sons, thus Willy does not expect to get any of the inheritance his brother, who had left home at the age of nineteen to search for diamonds in the mines of Africa and came out hugely rich at the age of twenty-one, is likely to leave his family.
We see at the opening of this play Ben contemplating death, because he is dying of cancer. He is particularly disturbed because he is expecting his sons with their wives to come swooping down from their different perches like vultures to see what they can get out of the old man before he dies. Little interested in coming to visit Ben while he was robust and younger, now after years of absence they “suddenly” show an interest in his wellbeing. They do not fool Ben, however, for he is well prepared for their necrophagous visit.
Predictably, the sons, with their wives, begin to arrive faithfully little by little. It does not take long for them to reveal their true colors and motives, biting each other in the back, each claiming to deserve a hefty chunk of Ben’s estate with passionate and logical justification. As time begins to drag for their impatience, they begin to plot his murder, since “he was going to die anyway.” Among them are Ben’s faithful doctor, Harrison, and Rebecca, one of the wives, who has been accustomed to high living but now begins to fall under the spell of unexpected love. Her new personality begins to insinuate itself in bachelor Harrison’s romantic sensibilities. There is also the Benjamin of the family, Ben Junior, jazz musician recently discharged from the Army. His hipster life and bohemian attitude toward life carries a certain sense of justice and genuine love for his “pop.”
The intrigue of the other members of the family pressures Junior into participating in Ben’s murder – passionately against his better judgment and feelings. The date is set for Ben’s murder: death by poisoning. Junior and June, one of the wives who has fallen in love with him, are to carry out the nefarious deed by poisoning his dessert. With so many dishes and servings looking alike, the inevitable happens: they poison the wrong person, Joe. Unbeknownst to everyone, except his latest wife, Miriam, Ben has been listening to all their secretive plotting conversations with hidden mikes throughout the house. But Ben was not going to wait to be poisoned “by another hand.” Because of his unbearable pain, Ben had arranged for Harrison to give him a pill that would relieve his pain permanently. While Joe is dying from the poison intended for Ben, the shrewd Ben is also dying from the pill he has just swallowed, saying to his dead son, “Don’t fret, son, I’ll be right behind you.”
Under the mistaken [misled] belief that Ben had not yet made out his last testament, the scheming sons had wanted him dead before he could cut them out of his will. But the last testament has most surprising but revealing contents and conditions.
