Morosco Theatre, (2/10/1949 - 11/18/1950)
Preview: Total Previews:
Opening: Feb 10, 1949
Closing: Nov 18, 1950 Total Performances: 742
Category: Play, Drama, Original, Broadway
Setting: Willy Loman's house and various places he visits in New York City and Boston today.
Opening Night Production Credits
Theatre Operated by City Playhouses, Inc. (Louis A. Lotito, President)
Produced by Kermit Bloomgarden and Walter Fried
Written by Arthur Miller; Incidental music by Alex North
Staged by Elia Kazan
Scenic Design by Jo Mielziner; Lighting Design by Jo Mielziner; Costume Design by Julia Sze; Assistant to Mr. Mielziner: John Harvey
General Manager: Max Allentuck
Stage Manager: Leonard Patrick; Assistant Stage Mgr: James Gregory; Production Stage Manager: Del Hughes
Music Contractor: Joseph Haber; Trumpet: William Brooks; Clarinet: Louis Klein; Cello: Abe Kessler; Flute: Victor Harris
Press Representative: James D. Proctor; Assistant Press Representative: Anne Sloper; Assistant to the Director: Robert Simon; Production Assistant: Ethel Winant
Opening Night Cast
Lee J. Cobb………. Willy Loman
Thomas Chalmers………. Uncle Ben
Mildred Dunnock………. Linda
Alan Hewitt………. Howard Wagner
Arthur Kennedy………. Biff
Cameron Mitchell………. Happy
Howard Smith………. Charley
Hope Cameron………. Letta
Winifred Cushing………. The Woman
Ann Driscoll………. Secretary
Constance Ford………. Miss Forsythe
Don Keefer………. Bernard
Tom Pedi………. Stanley
Title: Undying Salesman. By: Klinghoffer, David, National Review, 00280038, 3/8/1999, Vol. 51, Issue 4
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UNDYING SALESMAN
'ARTHUR MILLER": Eyes roll up in one's head at the mention of the name. The McCarthy witch-hunt era, bankruptcy of the American dream, rapacious capitalism, Reagan's Decade of Greed: Such are the themes of antique liberalism associated with Miller and his plays, including Death of a Salesman, now revived on Broadway to much adulation for the 50th anniversary of its premiere. Yawwwn!
Though as a high-school student I somehow escaped reading Death, I knew -or I thought I did-what it was about. Something to do with the bankruptcy of the American dream. Willy Loman, traveling salesman, is driven to suicide because success American-style is all about nakedly marketing oneself. "The only thing you got in this world is what you can sell," declares Willy's neighbor Charley in what might be taken as Miller's thesis statement. And this perverse commercial imperative makes true happiness for a man elusive if not impossible.
For a man-but what about a woman? At drinks before the play, my date explained how anxious her girlfriends, in their early 20s, feel about career success. "I mean," she said, "even today it's much harder for women to get ahead than it is for men. You know, with the glass ceiling and all." I looked around the little cylindrical Vodka Bar at the Royalton Hotel, where everyone wears black, and guessed that most of the other patrons would share her view. Now that women routinely labor outside their homes, we are all Willy Loman.
Or are we? A couple of hours later, halfway into Death, that was the question to contemplate.
A peculiar thing about Miller's plays is that, despite the agitprop points he meant to score through them, with minor tinkering or none at all they can speak with fresh power to contemporary audiences. Take The Crucible (1953), which roused the Salem witch-trial victims from historical slumber to prophesy against Senator McCarthy and HUAC. Nowadays, everything to do with anti-Communism has faded into irrelevance, a topic fascinating to fewer and fewer. So when the play was adapted onscreen in 1996, director Nicholas Hytner shrewdly avoided pressing any alleged parallels with McCarthyite excess. Instead he focused on the atmosphere of sexual paranoia generated by Winona Ryder and her band of lying, predatory little girls, accusers of Daniel Day-Lewis's fallible Puritan minister. Whatever the playwright himself thought to convey, old Salem in Hytner's hands became chillingly timeless. As directed by Robert Falls, so too does Death of a Salesman. Miller's words are left unaltered, the place and period untouched: outer-borough New York circa 1949, though Willy's memories of two decades earlier are ingeniously woven into the action. When Willy begins to converse with invisible interlocutors, spooking his wife and sons, you know what ghosts he's seeing. As Willy, Brian Dennehy makes your heart tremble. An actor familiar from supporting film roles, usually in some connection with law enforcement, he's got physical bulk of a kind that makes the pathos of Willy all the more appalling. Though he's a beefy guy, clothes hang on him evocatively. (He has explained that his pants always look baggy this way because "I'm f***ing Irish. I got no a** and a big belly.") In the final scene of confrontation with his son Biff, this is not a fellow you want to see cringing, his once-booming voice reduced to a cracked vessel. Biff, 34 years old, is home after some years out West as a farmhand, having utterly failed to live up to his father's expectations. Willy has failed even more miserably. Death condenses 24 hours, in the course of which he loses his job and resolves to die by auto "accident" in hope of leaving his family the insurance money. The play works agonizingly well. Not as any type of socialist harangue, but rather as a meditation on manhood. Try the following thought experiment: Imagine an updated Death of a Salesperson with, in the tragic lead, not Willy but Wendy Loman, disappointed to the verge of self-murder by her own inability, and that of her two daughters, to shatter the glass ceiling as bond traders at Goldman, Sachs.
Doesn't work, does it? No matter what success the Arthur Millers of the past few generations have had in shearing us of traditional assumptions about what choices in life are most conducive to human thriving, certain facts about our nature persist. Devoted though they may be to their work, women unlike men are not deeply humiliated by a tumbling career. A man's descent to failure is horrendous to contemplate. Whatever line of work you are in, we are all salesmen, selling our products, our services, our selves. Says Willy's neighbor Charley, in a line that crystallizes the anxiety of uncountable men everywhere, not just in America: "And when they start not smiling back"-employers, partners, customers-"that's an earthquake." Fifty years later, the fearfulness of Willy's predicament is undiminished because at heart we have the intuition that the soul of a man disposes him to provide for his family. If he can't do that, then in some fundamental way he has failed as a man, and he knows it. We may repress this instinctive knowledge, but ultimately it pops up like a rubber duck in a bathtub. Fifty years from now, whatever new varieties of social progress have been inflicted on us, we can be sure that-in its timelessness, however unintended by its author -Death of Salesman will be alive and well.
http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=2&hid=108&sid=dcbd0205-00d9-4419-bb03-087d225090a8%40sessionmgr112&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#db=a9h&AN=1572102
Title: American Tragedy. By: Zoglin, Richard, Time, 0040781X, 02/15/99, Vol. 153, Issue 6
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AMERICAN TRAGEDY
At 50, Willy Loman is still our favorite failure
LINDA LOMAN: Attention, attention must finally be paid to such a person.
Death of A Salesman got plenty of attention right from the start. When it opened on Broadway in February 1949, the advance buzz was intense, the critics mostly raved (though TIME's Louis Kronenberger complained about its "inadequate artistry" and "sometimes stolid prose"), and the play went on to win both a Tony Award and the Pulitzer Prize. It catapulted Arthur Miller to the top rank of American playwrights and has made perhaps a firmer dent in our consciousness than any other drama written for the American stage. So when the play celebrates its 50th anniversary this week with a new Broadway production, it's not just an occasion for theatrical nostalgia but time for a question: Why does this depressing, sometimes overwritten, painfully familiar play still move us in almost every incarnation?
WILLY: He's liked, but he's not--well liked.
The chief reason, of course, is Willy Loman, that all-American victim of his own skewed recipe for success. What's amazing is how flexible and eternally renewable the role has proved to be. Lee J. Cobb created the 63-year-old Willy when he was just in his 30s. Miller hated Fredric March's interpretation in the 1951 movie (he turned Willy into "a psycho," Miller felt), yet March gave the character both a tragic grandeur and a Rotarian recognizability that are unforgettable. There have been black Willy Lomans and Chinese Willy Lomans; big, bearish Willys like George C. Scott and feisty, bantamweight Willys like Dustin Hoffman. Brian Dennehy, in the new production from Chicago's Goodman Theatre that opens (with some minor cast changes) on Broadway this week, is a solid entrant in the big-Willy tradition. He's a charismatic man who, it's easy to imagine, might actually have been liked, even well liked, in his prime. Yet his lumbering frame seems constantly ready to tip over, a giant reduced to childlike confusion.
BEN: When I was 17 I walked into the jungle, and when I was 21 I walked out. And by God I was rich.
Miller was a social realist, yet it's easy to forget that Death of a Salesman was also an experimental work, with its fluid leaps in time as Willy drifts into memories of his sons as teenagers and of his idolized brother Ben. Director Robert Falls' expressionistic new version--the traditional house set replaced by props and rooms that rotate around Willy on a turntable--puts the focus on Willy's interior life. While not quite the revisionist breakthrough some have hailed it (a 1996 production at London's National Theatre, the stage dominated by a broken tree, departed similarly from naturalistic convention), it reminds us of how influential the play has been stylistically. Seemingly every third play that appears these days, from Golden Child to Side Man, features some kind of time-traveling device, mixing past and present, fantasy and reality--thanks, at least in part, to Death of a Salesman.
WILLY: The Supreme Court! And he didn't even mention it! CHARLEY: He don't have to--he's gonna do it.
Critics have carped about the play's sometimes pretentious language ("Nobody dast blame this man..."). But at its best Miller's dialogue was unmatched for its plainspoken eloquence and economy. Willy, the blusterer with big dreams for his sons, meets Bernard, the nerdy next-door neighbor, now grown up and about to argue a case before the Supreme Court--but possessing too much compassion for Willy to brag about it. Miller captured the essence of Willy's self-delusion and failure in a brief exchange charged with emotion, wit and character insight. Call that poetry.
CHARLEY: A salesman is got to dream, boy. It comes with the territory.
The famous eulogy that closes the play is perhaps its cruelest joke. Despite Charley's attempt to ennoble him, Willy's downfall is unrelievedly bleak. (Hardly anyone even shows up at his funeral!) "My God, it's so sad," director Elia Kazan exclaimed to Miller after reading the play for the first time. "It's supposed to be sad," Miller replied. That it continues to fascinate us is testimony to Miller's ability to pack so much--heartbreaking family drama, an Ibsenian tragedy of illusions shattered, an indictment of American capitalism--into one beaten-down figure with a sample case. After 50 years it still makes the sale.
http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=2&hid=108&sid=2a03c193-d2a9-42ce-886f-502ecfb15a86%40sessionmgr111&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#db=a9h&AN=1521347
Circle in the Square Theatre, (6/26/1975 - 8/24/1975)
Preview: May 30, 1975 Total Previews: 23
Opening: Jun 26, 1975
Closing: Aug 24, 1975 Total Performances: 71
Category: Play, Drama, Revival, Broadway
Setting: New York and Boston in the late 1940's.
Opening Night Production Credits
Theatre Owned / Operated by Circle in the Square (under the direction of Theodore Mann and Paul Libin)
Produced by Circle in the Square (Theodore Mann: Artistic Director; Paul Libin: Managing Director)
Written by Arthur Miller; Incidental music by Craig Wasson
Directed by George C. Scott
Scenic Design by Marjorie Kellogg; Lighting Design by Thomas Skelton; Costume Design by Arthur Boccia
Company Manager: William Conn
Production Stage Manager: Randall Brooks; Stage Manager: James Bernardi
Circle in the Square General Press Representative: Merle Debuskey; Press Representative: Susan L. Schulman; Circle in the Square Advertising: Don Josephson and Blaine-Thompson; Assistant to the Managing Director: Alan Wasser; Photographer: Inge Morath
Opening Night Cast
Ramon Bieri………. Uncle Ben
James Farentino……… Biff
Harvey Keitel………. Happy
George C. Scott………. Willy Loman
Teresa Wright………. Linda
Arthur French………. Charley
Julie Garfield………. Second Woman
Bara-Cristin Hansen………. Miss Forsythe
Helen Harrelson………. Jenny
Joanne Jonas………. Letta
Mordecai Lawner………. Stanley
Pirie MacDonald………. Howard Wagner
Chuck Patterson………. Bernard
Patricia Quinn………. First Woman
Craig Wasson………. Waiter
Broadhurst Theatre, (3/29/1984 - 7/1/1984)
Preview: Mar 21, 1984 Total Previews: 9
Opening: Mar 29, 1984
Closing: Jul 1, 1984 Total Performances: 97
Category: Play, Drama, Revival, Broadway
Setting: A 24 hour period. Willy Loman's house and yard and various places he visits in New York and Boston.
Opening Night Production Credits
Theatre Owned / Operated by The Shubert Organization (Gerald Schoenfeld: Chairman; Bernard B. Jacobs: President)
Produced by Robert Whitehead and Roger L. Stevens
Written by Arthur Miller; Incidental music by Alex North
Directed by Michael Rudman
Scenic Design by Ben Edwards; Costume Design by Ruth Morley; Lighting Design by Thomas Skelton; Make-Up Design by Ann Belsky; Hair Design by Alan D'Angerio; Sound Consultant: Tom Morse
General Manager: David Hedges; Assistant Co. Mgr: Bruce Klinger
Production Stage Manager: Thomas A. Kelly; Stage Manager: Charles Kindl; Assistant Stage Mgr: Patricia Fay
Production Associate: Doris Blum; General Press Representative: Patricia Krawitz; Casting: Terry Fay; Photographer: Inge Morath; Advertising: Lawrence Weiner and Associates
Opening Night Cast
Dustin Hoffman………. Willy Loman
John Malkovich………. Biff
Kate Reid………. Linda
David Huddleston………. Charley
Stephen Lang………. Happy
Louis Zorich………. Uncle Ben
David Chandler………. Bernard
Patricia Fay………. Secretary
Linda Kozlowski………. Miss Forsythe
Karen Needle………. Letta
Jon Polito………. Howard Wagner
Michael Quinlan………. Waiter
Kathy Rossetter ………. Woman from Boston
Tom Signorelli………. Stanley
March 30, 1984
Hoffman, 'Death of Salesman'
By FRANK RICH
Willy Loman in Arthur Miller's ''Death of a Salesman,'' Dustin Hoffman doesn't trudge heavily to the grave - he sprints. His fist is raised and his face is cocked defiantly upwards, so that his rimless spectacles glint in the Brooklyn moonlight. But how does one square that feisty image with what will come after his final exit - and with what has come before? Earlier, Mr. Hoffman's Willy has collapsed to the floor of a Broadway steakhouse, mewling and shrieking like an abandoned baby. That moment had led to the spectacle of the actor sitting in the straightback chair of his kitchen, crying out in rage to his elder son, Biff. ''I'm not a dime a dozen!,'' Mr. Hoffman rants, looking and sounding so small that we fear the price quoted by Biff may, if anything, be too high.
To reconcile these sides of Willy - the brave fighter and the whipped child - you really have no choice but to see what Mr. Hoffman is up to at the Broadhurst. In undertaking one of our theater's classic roles, this daring actor has pursued his own brilliant conception of the character. Mr. Hoffman is not playing a larger-than-life protagonist but the small man described in the script - the ''little boat looking for a harbor,'' the eternally adolescent American male who goes to the grave without ever learning who he is. And by staking no claim to the stature of a tragic hero, Mr. Hoffman's Willy becomes a harrowing American everyman. His bouncy final exit is the death of a salesman, all right. Willy rides to suicide, as he rode through life, on the foolish, empty pride of ''a smile and a shoeshine.''
Even when Mr. Hoffman's follow- through falls short of his characterization - it takes a good while to accept him as 63 years old - we're riveted by the wasted vitality of his small Willy, a man full of fight for all the wrong battles. What's more, the star has not turned ''Death of a Salesman'' into a vehicle. Under the balanced direction of Michael Rudman, this revival is an exceptional ensemble effort, strongly cast throughout. John Malkovich, who plays the lost Biff, gives a performance of such spellbinding effect that he becomes the evening's anchor. When Biff finally forgives Willy and nestles his head lovingly on his father's chest, the whole audience leans forward to be folded into the embrace: we know we're watching the salesman arrive, however temporarily, at the only safe harbor he'll ever know.
But as much as we marvel at the acting in this ''Death of a Salesman,'' we also marvel at the play. Mr. Miller's masterwork has been picked to death by critics over the last 35 years, and its reputation has been clouded by the author's subsequent career. We know its flaws by heart - the big secret withheld from the audience until Act II, and the symbolic old brother Ben (Louis Zorich), forever championing the American dream in literary prose. Yet how small and academic these quibbles look when set against the fact of the thunderous thing itself.
In ''Death of Salesman,'' Mr. Miller wrote with a fierce, liberating urgency. Even as his play marches steadily onward to its preordained conclusion, it roams about through time and space, connecting present miseries with past traumas and drawing blood almost everywhere it goes. Though the author's condemnation of the American success ethic is stated baldly, it is also woven, at times humorously, into the action. When Willy proudly speaks of owning a refrigerator that's promoted with the ''biggest ads,'' we see that the pathological credo of being ''well liked'' requires that he consume products that have the aura of popularity, too.
Still, Mr. Rudman and his cast don't make the mistake of presenting the play as a monument of social thought: the author's themes can take care of themselves. Like most of Mr. Miller's work, ''Death of a Salesman'' is most of all about fathers and sons. There are many father-son relationships in the play - not just those of the Loman household, but those enmeshing Willy's neighbors and employer. The drama's tidal pull comes from the sons' tortured attempts to reconcile themselves to their fathers' dreams. It's not Willy's pointless death that moves us; it's Biff's decision to go on living. Biff, the princely high school football hero turned drifter, must find the courage both to love his father and leave him forever behind.
Mr. Hoffman's Willy takes flight late in Act I, when he first alludes to his relationship with his own father. Recalling how his father left when he was still a child, Willy says, ''I never had a chance to talk to him, and I still feel - kind of temporary about myself.'' As Mr. Hoffman's voice breaks on the word ''temporary,'' his spirit cracks into aged defeat. From then on, it's a merciless drop to the bottom of his ''strange thoughts'' - the hallucinatory memory sequences that send him careening in and out of a lifetime of anxiety. Mr. Rudman stages these apparitional flashbacks with bruising force; we see why Biff says that Willy is spewing out ''vomit from his mind.'' As Mr. Hoffman stumbles through the shadowy recollections of his past, trying both to deny and transmute the awful truth of an impoverished existence, he lurches and bobs like a strand of broken straw tossed by a mean wind.
As we expect from this star, he has affected a new physical and vocal presence for Willy: a baldish, silver- maned head; a shuffling walk; a brash, Brooklyn-tinged voice that well serves the character's comic penchant for contradicting himself in nearly every sentence. But what's most poignant about the getup may be the costume (designed by Ruth Morley). Mr. Hoffman's Willy is a total break with the mountainous Lee J. Cobb image. He's a trim, immaculately outfitted go-getter in a three- piece suit - replete with bright matching tie and handkerchief. Is there anything sadder than a nobody dressed for success, or an old man masquerading as his younger self? The star seems to wilt within the self- parodistic costume throughout the evening. ''You can't eat the orange and throw away the peel!,'' Willy pleads to the callow young boss (Jon Polito) who fires him - and, looking at the wizened and spent Mr. Hoffman, we realize that he is indeed the peel, tossed into the gutter. Mr. Malkovich, hulking and unsmiling, is an inversion of Mr. Hoffman's father; he's what Willy might be if he'd ever stopped lying to himself. Anyone who saw this remarkable young actor as the rambunctious rascal of ''True West'' may find his transformation here as astonishing as the star's. His Biff is soft and tentative, with sullen eyes and a slow, distant voice that seems entombed with his aborted teen-age promise; his big hands flop around diffidently as he tries to convey his anguish to his roguish brother Happy (Stephen Lang). Once Biff accepts who he is - and who his father is - the catharic recognition seems to break through Mr. Malkovich (and the theater) like a raging fever. ''Help him!'' he yells as his father collapses at the restaurant - only to melt instantly into a blurry, tearful plea of ''Help me! Help me!''
In the problematic role of the mother, Kate Reid is miraculously convincing: Whether she's professing her love for Willy or damning Happy as a ''philandering bum,'' she somehow melds affection with pure steel. Mr. Lang captures the vulgarity and desperate narcissism of the younger brother, and David Chandler takes the goo out of the model boy next door. As Mr. Chandler's father - and Willy's only friend - David Huddleston radiates a quiet benovolence as expansive as his considerable girth. One must also applaud Thomas Skelton, whose lighting imaginatively meets every shift in time and mood, and the set designer Ben Edwards, who surrounds the shabby Loman house with malevolent apartment towers poised to swallow Willy up.
But it's Mr. Hoffman and Mr. Malkovich who demand that our attention be paid anew to ''Death of a Salesman.'' When their performances meet in a great, binding passion, we see the transcendant sum of two of the American theater's most lowly, yet enduring, parts.
http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/11/12/specials/miller-hoffstage.html
Broadhurst Theatre, (9/14/1984 - 11/18/1984)
Preview: Total Previews:
Opening: Sep 14, 1984
Closing: Nov 18, 1984 Total Performances: 88
Category: Play, Drama, Revival, Broadway
Setting: A 24 hour period. Willy Loman's home and yard and various places he visits in New York and Boston.
This production is a return engagement of Death of a Salesman (3/29/1984 - 7/1/1984)
Opening Night Production Credits
Produced by Robert Whitehead and Roger L. Stevens
Written by Arthur Miller; Incidental music by Alex North
Directed by Michael Rudman
Scenic Design by Ben Edwards; Costume Design by Ruth Morley; Lighting Design by Thomas Skelton; Make-Up Design by Ann Belsky; Hair Design by Alan D'Angerio
General Manager: David Hedges
Production Stage Manager: Thomas A. Kelly; Stage Manager: Charles Kindl and Patricia Fay
Production Associate: Doris Blum; Casting: Terry Fay; General Press Representative: Patricia Krawitz
Opening Night Cast
Dustin Hoffman………. Willy Loman
John Malkovich………. Biff
Kate Reid……. Linda
David Huddleston……… Charley
Stephen Lang………. Happy
Louis Zorich………. Uncle Ben
David Chandler………. Bernard
Patricia Fay………. Secretary
Linda Kozlowski………. Miss Forsythe
Karen Needle………. Letta
Jon Polito………. Howard Wagner
Michael Quinlan………. Waiter
Kathy Rossetter………. The Woman
Tom Signorelli………. Stanley
Eugene O'Neill Theatre, (2/10/1999 - 11/7/1999)
Preview: Jan 22, 1999
Total Previews: 22
Opening: Feb 10, 1999
Closing: Nov 7, 1999
Total Performances: 274
Category: Play, Drama, Revival, Broadway
Setting: New York and Boston in the late 1940's.
Opening Night Production Credits [see more]
Theatre Owned / Operated by Jujamcyn Theaters (James H. Binger: Chairman; Rocco Landesman: President; Paul Libin: Producing Director; Jack Viertel: Creative Director)
Produced by David Richenthal, Jujamcyn Theaters (James H. Binger: Chairman; Rocco Landesman: President; Paul Libin: Producing Director; Jack Viertel: Creative Director), Allan S. Gordon and Fox Theatricals; Produced in association with Jerry Frankel; Produced by arrangement with The Roundabout Theatre Company (Todd Haimes: Artistic Director; Ellen Richard: Managing Director; Julia C. Levy: Executive Director of External Affairs; Gene Feist: Founding Director); Associate Producer: PACE Theatrical Group, Inc.
Originally produced by Goodman Theatre
Written by Arthur Miller; Incidental music by Richard Woodbury
Directed by Robert Falls
Scenic Design by Mark Wendland; Costume Design by Birgit Rattenborg Wise; Lighting Design by Michael S. Philippi; Sound Design by Richard Woodbury
General Manager: Robert Cole and Steven Chaikelson; Company Manager: Lisa M. Poyer
Production Stage Manager: Joseph Drummond; Technical Supervisor: Gene O'Donovan and Neil A. Mazzella; Production Supervisor: Martin Gold; Stage Manager: Robert Kellogg
Opening Night Cast
Kevin Anderson………. Biff
Brian Dennehy………. Willy Loman
Elizabeth Franz………. Linda
Chelsea Altman………. Letta
Kate Buddeke………. The Woman
Barbara Eda-Young………. Secretary
Allen Hamilton………. Uncle Ben
Kent Klineman………. Stanley
Ted Koch………. Happy
Stephanie March………. Miss Forsythe
Steve Pickering………. Howard Wagner
Richard Thompson………. Bernard
Howard Witt………. Charley
A CurtainUp Review
Death of a Salesman
By Allan Wallach
As soon as Willy Loman appears in the doorway of his Brooklyn house lugging his sample cases filled with empty dreams, sections of the house separate and drift apart, suggesting the Loman family itself, whose members seem to move in separate orbits. This striking initial image of Robert Fall's powerful 50th anniversary production of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman introduces us to a production that strips away notions that we're meant to view Willy's downfall as a condemnation of society. At its wounded heart this is a play about a family adrift. Even more than the 1984 Broadway revival starring Dustin Hoffman, it leaves us pondering the explosive mix of love, contempt and seething anger that at times pulls the Loman family together and at others hurls them apart. Although this was true of Elia Kazan's 1949 staging, the many articles and essays it inspired placed the emphasis on Willy's skewed values ("Be liked and you will never want"). Miller's indictment of those values, however, was never as persuasive as he seemed to believe. The play, too, was burdened then by the weighty question - prompted by Miller's own shifting ruminations - of whether a tragedy could have a common man as its flawed hero. The famous lines that figured so prominently in those long-ago debates (notably Linda Loman's "Attention, attention must be finally paid to such a person" and Willy's own "You can't eat the orange and throw the peel away - a man is not a piece of fruit!" are still present. Yet, for the most part, Fall's brilliant rethinking of the play - his production has arrived on Broadway 50 years to the day from the original opening on Feb. 10, 1949 -- makes them less portentous now; they're consumed by the ferocity of the emotions that surround them. This may be the angriest Salesman I've ever seen. At its core is the mercurial acting of Brian Dennehy, recreating his role in last year's production at the Goodman Theater in Chicago. His Willy has a salesman's quick, eager smile and expansiveness, yet he is never far from the rage and bewilderment that keep him shambling between the dismal present and the hallucinatory past. Even Dennehy's sheer size works for him; when he sags, his massive body seems to implode. The other outstanding performance is that of Elizabeth Franz, who was also in the Goodman Theater production. She catches every glint of Linda Loman's love for her husband and fierce anger at her sons, Biff and Happy, over their casually thoughtless treatment of Willy. (During the curtain calls at the preview I attended, Franz still seemed stricken by Linda's sad and baffled graveside speech that ends the play.) There is fine work as well by several others in the cast, especially Kevin Anderson as the embittered and hopelessly lost Biff. The final showdown between Biff and Willy, in which rage is somehow transmuted into groping love, is beautifully handled by both actors. Also good are Ted Koch, as Happy, Allen Hamilton, as Uncle Ben, the debonair success-image of Willy's hallucinations, and Howard Witt as Charley, although Witt can't overcome the awkwardness of Charley's famous eulogy ("Nobody dast blame this man"). One of the production's significant departures is the shifting modular scenic design by Mark Wendland. Although quite different from Jo Mielziner's skeletal multilevel set in the original production, the scenery is equally efficient in the abrupt transitions between the present and a past that's filtered through Willy's tormented mind. Through all these changes, Fall's masterly direction keeps the play focused on Willy and the other members of the Loman family as they move uncomprehendingly toward destruction.
http://www.curtainup.com/salesman.htmlA CurtainUp London Review
Death of a Salesman
by Lizzie Loveridge
For once in my life I'd like to own something outright before its broken. ---- Willy
Douglas Henshall as Biff and Brian Dennehy as Willy Loman(Photo: Catherine Ashmore) Robert Falls' Chicago production of the late Arthur Miller's 1948 play, Death of a Salesman comes to London after an elapse of more than seven years. It won four Tonys in 1999, including Best Direction, Best Actor for Brian Dennehy and Best Revival of a Play. With Brian Dennehy as Willy and the older male parts intact from the American production, Linda Loman and the boys are recast with British actors. Clare Higgins who won the Olivier for her recent role of Hecuba at the Donmar, plays Linda and Douglas Henshall takes on Biff, with Mark Bazeley as Happy. Like fine wine, some things can only improve with age and this production seems to be one of them. Deviating from Miller's original intentions, here the Loman family are not distinguishably Jewish, they are simply American with the dreams and ambitions fostered by the America Dream. The rejection of Willy Loman by the son of his old employer strikes even more of a chord today where youth culture dominates big companies. I found the play almost harrowing as we are forced to watch the decline of a man and the destruction of every one of his unrealised hopes. Willy's final scene is the ultimate self-delusion as Willy imagines that Biff will benefit from his life insurance. What places Miller's play firmly in its historical context is the role of the salesman. The concept of this man who is , in Charley's words in the final scene, "He's a man way out there is the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine . . . A salesman is got to dream, boy. It comes with the territory." Much of Willy's hero worship is for the 84 year old salesman whose his funeral was attended by hundreds of salesman and buyers. What Miller is telling us is that these travelling salesmen are already, in 1948, a thing of the past, as are the kind of businesses they sold to. Brian Dennehy as the patriarch is stubborn, volatile, angry, often his own worst enemy and a bully towards long-suffering Linda. Dennehy commands the stage, his enormous presence dominates. Here he is often hunched with age, exhausted as Willy is, his thin arms sticking out from his shirt sleeves, his hands clawed. Willy's nostalgic revisiting of his youth is played out in revolving scenes, the narrative of which spin and trap him into the vortex of the present. We care what happens to Willy not because we love him but because we care about the people who love him. I found Clare Higgins' Linda deeply moving. She is an amazing actress who can convey deep emotion at a quiet almost minimal level and it is in her scenes that the play first compels. Linda spends much of the play appeasing and protecting Willy. She enjoys having both her boys at home but her delight is patent when, in the morning, Willy awakes refreshed from sleep and more cheerful. The life of a salesman's wife was one waiting for him to come home. Douglas Henshall as Biff is the son who carries his father's dreams and disappointment and again we feel it is the high expectations Willy has for his son which have caused the problem. Douglas Henshall nicely plays the young Biff with a naivety and innocence of youth. Glowing with youth, wearing his 1930s sporting kit, he is the star footballer with so much promise. Biff seeks that which he can never have, an acknowledgement from his father of the reality of Biff's situation. Biff wins our admiration for facing up to the uncomfortable truth and the backing of every child who has been the subject of unbridled parental ambition. There are star moments too in the minor roles: the awkward look of embarrassment and desire to escape on the face of Howard Wagner (Steve Pickering) in his final interview with Willy where Howard betrays his father's old employee. The costume conveys period well, coping with the transition from 1930s to 1940s with baggy plus fours and wide lapelled suits with loud ties. I liked the cacophony of traffic and brakes and jazz to convey the backdrop of the city. The revolving set too plays its part in smoothly coping with the many changes of scene called for, like the compartmentalised life Willy leads.
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Statement: Producing the Play
Paragraph #1: Production Problems Posed by the Text
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