LYRIC

DEATH OF A SALESMAN by ARTHUR MILLER director ROBERT FALLS décor MARK WENDLAND with BRIAN DENNEHY willy, CLARE HIGGINS wife linda, DOUGLAS HENSHALL son biff, HOWARD WITT neighbour sam, JONATHAN ARIS sam’s son

The key to Miller’s masterpiece has always been it’s a dream play. In the 1940’s, it is important to note, Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller were the two great voices writing social history in the format of dream plays…Death of a Salesman and Glass Menagerie. The American dream, a delusion at best, after the Wall Street crash, had turned into a nightmare… the trauma tumbled into a confusion, so difficult to grasp…before that every man could be president… advertising added to the dream-illusion… generations believed… was it a lie or was it easier to be like the salesman who could sell anything by his smile, his pitch, his personality, his illusions that had no reality. The salesman in the USA was everyman…the American dream from the president of the USA down to the fuller brush man. I well remember the first night of Death of a Salesman when there was not a dry eye from the men in the audience as they identified their own fathers. Miller made Willy Loman the metaphor for the American dream that never existed and the tragedy of the salesman mentality when the bubble broke. The brilliance of this production is Falls’ concept of keeping the whole play on that dream level, overlapping scenes as they run through Willy Loman’s head…reality never quite played-out to break the dream sequence. The set blends with the concept and allows the dream to flow always keeping the characters on stage with few entrances and exits. It is strangely evident how much slower the pace in the 1940’s was and how much faster we cotton on to conclusions. The slow build-up is gone, gone, gone from our era and as a result, Death of a Salesman could be cut without losing any impact. The play has been done in the UK very successfully at NT starring Warren Mitchell, but it has never been so well understood as this production which took six years to arrive from the Goodman Theatre, Chicago plus the several years on Broadway. David Richenthal, its producer, should be thanked for his persistent caring.

Casting Brian Dennehy as Willy is almost a dream in itself as if in a fairytale where the giant (in actuality that he is) falls from his great height and thus tragedy, in the full Greek sense of the word, is clearly seen. Willy cannot face the reality of himself, his son Biff or the business world in which he lived. He cannot face his life’s work, which his place in the world, has come to an end and that the firm he worked for and helped to build has eaten the orange and thrown him away like its peel. Dennehy beautifully articulates the ageing Willy is in his pain and grasps the salesman Willy in his youthful triumphs. He is always performing even with his sons, rough on his wife who loves him, and tormented when alone. Dennehy reaches out constantly defining the illusive air. Lee Cobb, the original Willy, gave us a man with greater warmth and sex appeal who could never cope with the hardened cruelty of the business world, yet the audience could be fooled into believing his deserved success and be as devastated when he failed. But Dennehy gives us the giant who should be able to succeed despite his fantasy and thus the audience is devastated that such towering strength is a deception. Dennehy slides back and forth in age with ease yet sustains his agony throughout as the man who lived his lies. The giant gives us a giant rendition of Willy Loman that London will not forget. Clare Higgins as his wife expressed the character with all its strength in her famous speech of ‘attention must be paid’ and fought like a tiger to save her man. The toll she paid is written on her face in the abuse of time, the neglect of her sons, and the final blow of ending up alone in the house that’s finally paid for. Her subtle account of the wife as a strong woman facing reality who is brought to her knees is a portrait that will remain. Douglas Henshall, weak as young Biff, comes into his emotional apex when playing the older Biff, the son most damaged by his father’s delusions. Howard Witt as Charlie, the neighbour and Willy’s only friend, brings a dry humour and a source of humanity to whose performance attention must be paid. The part of his son by Jonathan Aris is another portrait finely painted as the wimp who worked hard and made it.

Arthur Miller died before Salesman’s arrival in London but the production has been dedicated to his memory and thus an added chink has been made in the annals of theatre history. Import! Import! Import!

May 10 – November 5