Alex Hassell (Biff), Harriet Walter (Linda Loman),
Antony Sher (Willy Loman) and Sam Marks (Happy). Photo: Ellie Kurttz
Reviewed by James Karas
The 100th anniversary
of the birth of Arthur Miller seemed like a good excuse for the Royal
Shakespeare Company to produce his masterpiece, Death of a Salesman.
Gregory Doran, the RSC’s Artistic
Director assigned the play to himself and gave the leading role to Antony Sher,
one of the best classical actors in the business. The result is an outstanding
production of an iconic play.
Death of a Salesman is about a person, a family and a national
dream. Willy Loman, the salesman, lives with his wife and two sons in a small, mortgaged
house in Brooklyn where everything seems to be purchased on the instalment plan.
Loman is an ordinary man who
drives to stores around New England selling goods. But he has big dreams about
himself and especially his children. He has illusions and delusions about the
past, the present and the future. Reality is a phase that he refuses or is
unable to face.
Sher is a small man and his size
is quite suitable for the pathetic Loman who is beaten down by reality but
keeps slugging and grasping for his dreams like a battered and bloodied boxer
vying for the championship. But he cannot escape the shallowness of his
thinking and his ambitions. Being “well liked” is not a formula for success. His
wise and humane neighbor Charley (Joshua Richards) gives him money but Willy
accepts it only as a loan and he intends to pay it back. And he believes it and
he means it.
Sher as Loman is garrulous,
offensive, annoying, pathetic and endlessly optimistic against all odds. Sher
captures all the negative aspects of Loman’s character but he also grasps his
humanity as the guilt-ridden little man tries to come to terms with his own
life. A simply outstanding performance.
Harriet Walter as his wife Linda
is the woman of strength and perseverance who knows it all, who sees his
goodness beneath the bombast and the illusions but can do nothing about it.
Walter strikes the necessary balance between the suffering wife, the knowing
woman and the strong mother.
Loman’s sons are fascinating
characters because they are the product and victims of his illusions and
delusions. Biff (Alex Hassell) buys into his father’s dreams and illusions
until reality comes crashing down on him. Hassell plays the young, handsome,
shallow, arrogant and mendacious Biff as if he were born to play the part. His
brother Happy (Sam Marks) is just as delusional and he learns nothing from his
father’s and Biff’s experience. He intends to make it.
Loman’s brother Ben appears like
a figment of Willy’s imagination. He is a man who went into the forest and came
out rich. He has fulfilled all if Willy’s dreams but he is not real.
Death of a Salesman is in part a memory play with flashbacks to the
past but the memories may be no more real than Loman’s illusions and
delusions. Designer Stephen Brimson
Lewis has set the Loman house between high rise buildings that are choking it.
For the restaurant and hotel scenes furniture is elevated from below stage. The
light changes from the grim tenements of the present to sunbathed buildings of
the past when we go back in time. Effective work by lighting designer Tim
Mitchell.
Doran has produced an extremely
effective production. From the minor players to the lead roles and the overall
design he has captured the essence of the great play. It is a paean to American
drama and to the great playwright on the centenary of his birth.
__________
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller runs until May 2, 2015 at the
Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Waterside, Stratford-upon-Avon and transfers to the Noel
Coward Theatre, 85-88 St Martin's Lane, London, WC2N 4AU from May 9 to July
18, 2015. www.rsc.org.uk
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