Theatre review: Death of a Salesman

Spoiler alert: The salesman still dies.

If London's unofficial Arthur Miller festival has been all about the playwright's unforgiving criticism of capitalism, it's only fitting that its finale is Death of a Salesman, in which an unremarkable man gives his life to the system in hope of its promised rewards, and is instead discarded by it as soon at his usefulness is done. But as is very clear in Marianne Elliott and Miranda Cromwell's production this is actually the tragedy of two men, father and son, each broken by a different aspect of what the American Dream promised them. Willy Loman (Wendell Pierce) is a 63-year-old travelling salesman who's been doing the job since his teens, and returns home early from a trip after a near-miss car accident. It's one of many in recent months and his wife Linda (Sharon D. Clarke) has reason to believe they've not been accidents at all but suicide attempts.

Meanwhile their oldest son Biff (Arinzé Kene) has returned to New York after years in the country working on ranches, and at the start of the play he and his brother Happy (Martins Imhangbe) are staying in their childhood bedroom after a night out.

Biff’s return only seems to have exacerbated his father’s mental deterioration caused by age, exhaustion and stress over his diminishing income: Willy now spends much of his time wandering around alone talking to the childhood version of his son, or to his dead brother Ben (Joseph Mydell.) The play’s constant dipping in and out of Willy’s mind is key to how Elliott and Cromwell’s production approaches the play, eschewing naturalism and going for a moody, shadowy, dreamlike feel with occasional moments of music and song. Anna Fleischle’s set is a house that never seems moored to its foundations, the windows, doorframes and furniture moving back and forth and up and down as needed – it’s a clever red herring in a way, because what seems to be simply part of the illustration of the flux in Willy’s world is in fact building up to a coup de théâtre that gives an extra little dig to the irony of the moment the mortgage is paid off.

This is only the second time I’ve seen Death of a Salesman but Pierce’s Loman seems particularly sympathetic despite his flaws, many of which are focused on the way he treats his wife: Perhaps it’s the way he constantly interrupts her to tell her not to interrupt him, which here feels less like a dismissal, more like he can’t face her. This might just be a reflection of who’s playing Linda – the play doesn’t suggest she knows about the way her husband betrayed her years earlier, but Sharon D. Clarke doesn’t feel like someone you could get much past, no matter how weary she might be.

But the main personality clash is the one between Willy and Biff, and Kene is interesting casting in part because of how hilariously buff he is – he absolutely looks the part of the jock everyone thought would be a huge success, but his demeanour entirely conveys the opposite, of someone who despite being in his mid-thirties is still essentially a lost child who doesn’t know who he is; much of the actual story revolves around unravelling the moment he went from one to the other, at the same time as he went from hero-worshipping his father to having contempt for him. They’re both victims of the American Dream: Willy’s belief that hard work will be enough, and his own personal mantra that the secret of success is to be “well-liked,” are both proven false when people have no need for him any more; Biff crumbles under the weight of expectation, he’s been brought up with the pressure to personify the American Dream, and when the scales fall from his eyes he’s left not knowing who all his potential is meant to impress.

Making the Lomans an African-American family adds an edge to some of the scenes of them being dismissed or patronised, but it’s not the main focal point of the production – probably for the best, as it’s been kept in its original 1940s setting, and the question does arise over whether Willy would have been given a job travelling throughout New England in the first place. What I did think the evening brought out very well was the way things in the script connect and double back on each other, like Willy making statements that he contradicts minutes later, or his guilt towards Linda manifesting itself when she mends her stockings, because that’s the gift he used to give The Woman (Maggie Service.) The production adds some thematic links of its own, like the flashbacks being framed as slide shows, which I felt connected to Howard’s (Matthew Seadon-Young) speech about his new tape recorder making all earlier ways of capturing family memories redundant.

In this recent quartet of Miller plays All My Sons is the one I’ve liked both times I’ve seen it, but this Death of a Salesman does a lot towards making me see why it’s a contender for the title of his masterpiece. Even coming in over the three hour mark it doesn’t feel like anything like as long an evening as it is, and while it’s a bleak story of the end of a man’s life it also contains genuine uplifting moments as while Willy’s best days may be past he still clings lovingly to the memory of them.

Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller is booking until the 13th of July at the Young Vic (returns only.)

Running time: 3 hours 10 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Brinkhoff-Moegenburg.