Death of a Salesman: Review

Arthur Miller was originally going to call Death of a Salesman ‘The Inside of His Head’, and it’s easy to see why in this lucid and powerful production of the postwar American classic. Willy Loman is a man in disintegration and assailed from voices on all sides, so that in the end his life appears to himself as a hallucination.

The actors sit at the side of the stage until their role calls them forward, which adds to the dream-like quality of the production. David Hayman is haunting as our travelling salesman who wants not just to be liked by everyone but ‘well liked’. This is the mantra he passes onto his feckless sons, Biff and Happy, who worship a man unable to live up to their expectations.

What’s so remarkable about Miller’s play is in revealing Loman’s duplicity – at one point he berates Biff for making jokes at work, then just moments later tells him to go into an important business meeting with a few jokes to hand. But this blindness takes a darker turn when Loman is caught by Biff with another woman in a hotel room in Boston while away on business.

Death of a Salesman. Photo by Tommy Ga-Ken Wan

Despite its sometimes gloomy message the play is full of humour and sarcastic asides, the banter between Loman and neighbour Charley (Benny Young), who bails him out financially, being a joy to watch. Beth Marshall puts in a resolute performance as Loman’s wife, Linda, trying to coax him off the road and castigating her two sons for abandoning their father in a restaurant to go chasing girls. It is women in Miller’s play who are strong, men who are weak.

Biff is played with studied intensity by Daniel Cahill. We see him as a young football star besotted with his father’s dreams of greatness for him, only to slowly rust away with disillusionment as both the world of business and Loman disappoint him. Michael Wallace plays Hap with wide-eyed innocence, chasing women and the good life yet continually promising his mother that he is about to settle down and marry.

Hayman shows great skill in showing how a man is brought low by his own misunderstanding of the world. He dreams of achieving the success of his brother Ben who ‘walked into the jungle aged 17 and came out at 21 a rich man’, yet struggles to makes the payments on his mortgage. Real success, as evidenced by Biff’s neighbour Bernard (Gavin Jon Wright), only comes through study and hard work, something the entire male side of the Loman family seem unable to grasp.

Adding to the evocativeness of the play is the live music of violins, mandolin, flute and dulcimer from Simon Donaldson, Fay Guffo and Gillian Massey, providing a perfect accompaniment to the action.

There is a tragic inevitability to the ending where Loman sees no way out, chased by internal demons. He is worth more alive than dead, he reasons, and his going will at least leave a legacy for Linda and the boys.

Miller says that when the play was first performed he regretted keeping the funeral scene at the end, which he felt cut short the dramatic power of the final act. There is something to be said for this, but in this vivid production the emotional punch remains to the very end.