Attention must be paid to Mike Nichols’ stunning production of Death of a Salesman,the insightful American tragedy of Willie Loman, at the Barrymore Theater. Past and present weave smoothly through Arthur Miller’s Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winner, again reaffirming its place as possibly the most perceptive drama of the American stage.
Willie battles to survive as his dream crumbles around him. He mourns lost opportunities and rails against the chances he no longer has. This universal tale of dreams and defeat is played out on Jo Mielziner’s original frame house set, cramped by the encroaching lights of apartment buildings, Alex North’s moody score wailing as an obbligato behind the drama.
Cogently portrayed with emotional conviction by Philip Seymour Hoffman, Willie Loman arrives home from his trek to New England earlier than expected. Selling was his life for over 30 years as the sales representative in New England, and now he is at the edge of losing it all. Enervated, he shuffles through the dark house, his heavy suitcases still full of the samples he should have sold. He is in debt with more bills waiting, he has just been in another car accident, and he has lived a life of false pride and denials and is now too debilitated to make it all work out once more.
As Linda, Willie’s long-suffering wife, Linda Emond is multi-layered with a strong spine, devoted to her husband and patient with his bravado and flares of temper. She helps him get to bed, encourages him to speak again to his boss, the intractable Howard (Remy Auberjonois), about working in New York instead of continuing with the wearisome travel. Linda’s life has focused on Willie, and at one point, she lashes out at her grown sons’ disrespect toward their father, exclaiming, “Attention must be paid.”
The sons, Happy and Biff, are heirs to Willie’s American dream. Willie is troubled by the aloofness of Biff (Andrew Garfield), once his golden boy who now keeps a distance from his father. His younger son, Happy (Finn Wittrock), has taken on an easy-going, good-humored charm, although he yearns for his father’s attention. Willie, however, has always been closest to Biff, once a promising football player. But Biff lost his personal drive and his respect for Willie after accidentally witnessing proof of his father’s serious flaws and hypocrisy. Willie’s big dreams about big success were all just big talk. Brian MacDevitt’s lighting design illuminates the memory scenes as they weave into the present, highlighting Willie’s youthful interaction with his boys, his pride in Biff’s achievements, and his enthusiastic suggestions for success. Also seen only in Willie’s increasingly illusionary memories is his brother, Ben, played with gustatory enthusiasm by John Glover. Apparently, Ben had offered Willie an opportunity to join him in a risky adventure, but Willie did not, and now is plagued by what might have been.
Charlie, a good-natured neighbor played by Bill Camp, has wryly watched Willie’s rises and falls, his prideful bluster and his despair. Charlie observed Willie and his boys relentlessly mock his own son, Bernard (Fran Kranz), a nerdy boy Biff’s age, but he took pleasure in Bernard’s eventual success as a lawyer. These are the memories that crowd Willie’s mind through the night.
The characters are sharply written and portrayed with depth and emotion. Hoffman is both physically and intelligently authentic as he wrenchingly evokes a husband and father driven by dreams for his family and destroyed by his flashy self-delusions and crushing disappointments. Emond is fully dimensional as his wife, and Garfield’s Biff, while first appearing too slim for an athlete, grows persuasively, showing a passion that is explosive in the second act.
Mike Nichols meticulously keeps his eye on the details revealing this American dream that cannot come true. The seamless interaction of idealization crashes against a heartless reality, proving that Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman is as relevant in 2012 as it was when directed by Elia Kazan in 1949.
