He is particularly anxious to make plain that Willy Loman – the flawed and defeated patriarch – in Death of a Salesman is not based on his father, though "one of the other characters has some similarities with an uncle".
Which is fine, but the problem is that there's not anything especially revelatory here: the cast of characters – the gruff patriarch, the diametrically opposed brothers – all feel very tired, and its dialogue sags rather than snaps.
Yes, the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, who had called Eurovision "repulsive to our soul and our culture", was spared the experience of his country hosting next year's show, the mixed honour bestowed on winning nations.
The Eurovision organisers are nonetheless probably almost as grateful as the patriarch that next year's contest will not be in Moscow, given the scattered boos heard for Gagarina in Saturday's event, a possible product of Russia's anti-gay laws, which prohibit gay "propaganda" aimed at young people.
William McGregor, de facto founder of the Football League, was very much a product of his times: fiercely-bearded late-Victorian patriarch, muscular Christian, and a fanatical teetotaller.
The portrait of the family patriarch, Bal Thackeray, a cartoonist turned rightwing populist politician who founded the Shiv Sena organisation in 1966 and led it until his death two years ago, is everywhere: hung in offices in slums, on the walls of cheap restaurants, beside temples.
The club – if perhaps not the team – were in upheaval when the club patriarch Uli Hoeness, the architect of Bayern's empire, was convicted of tax evasion to the tune of €27m and sentenced to three years and six months in prison.
Of course, he wasn't a conventional patriarch.
Ratan Tata, the patriarch of the Tata group, retired as chairman of Tata Steel on December 28th.
The louche and monied patriarch, Silvio Berlusconi, tries to bring down the government to keep himself out of jail.
The patriarch, who was born in Antwerp in 1924 and studied landscape architecture in Vilvoorde during the second world war, founded the company in 1948.
