DEATH OF A SALESMAN.
London
DEATH OF A SALESMAN
by Arthur Miller
Lyric Theatre
Tue-Sat 7.30pm Mat Wed & Sat 2.30pm
Runs 3hr 15min One interval
TICKETS: 0870 890 1107 (+£1.50 booking fee per ticket)
Review: Timothy Ramsden 17 May 2005
A dream of a Salesman.
Arthur Miller's 1949 critique of the American Dream has never seemed more dreamlike, in a staging based on blank, grey sections that swing and circulate with dreamlike fluidity; rarely can stage trucks and revolves have gone so far beyond scene-changing functionality as those Mark Wendland provides for Chicago director Robert Falls' production.
The dreaming's part of veteran salesman Willie Loman's self-delusion. He's a craggy, hulking figure with jutting jaw in Brian Dennehy's performance. Someone who, like Lear, has ever but slenderly known himself, dressing up irresponsibility and petty theft as vision and initiative. Avoiding the truth to the point where it's become a threat to be shouted down, Dennehy's Willie gradually reveals both businessman's hearty laughter and aggression bordering violence as covers for increasing fragility.
And it's the dreaming that is most evocatively realised through the set, Michael Philippi's lighting and Richard Woodbury's score, with its yearning phrases and perky city tunes. These come to the fore in the realistic moments that start with the downstage, well-lit reality at the end of act one, the first time the family's seen without Willie. They continue in the second act's real-world restaurant that later becomes haunted with Loman's guilt.
From the opening, where this huge figure leans for support on his front-door, the arm relieving the pressure shown on his face (his right arm's going to spend a lot of time hovering around the face, as Willie searches indecisively for support), to a final departure that echoes the beginning in its blankness and the distant, dreamlike echo-quality given to Linda's voice, Willie sleepwalks through his life of defeat at the hands of the instalment-plan materialism to which he aspires and which has him bound.
It's only after his death, which is not that of the old salesman who was his role-model, that Willie's wife pays off the mortgage and can say We're free at his graveside. The words can rarely have been so moving than as the climax of Clare Higgins' performance, which matches Dennehy's while contrasting it in the delineation of loneliness, worry, the sense of reality mixed with love and belief. The wife who insists attention should be paid to the husband who often ignores her, she ends spread full-length in grief by his grave. Earlier she's sat alone, shared Willie's joy or suffered in silence for the sake of her boys.
They, dark-haired Happy and blonde Biff, city and country dreamers in turn, give an all-American gloss to Willie's inheritance, Douglas Henshall's Biff building to the fury of despair, Mark Bazeley's Happy ending, paradoxically, in tears of confusion. Everyone else is fine, with Howard Witt's gravely downbeat Charley, the neighbour with good sense rather than illusionary vision, outstanding.
Willie Loman: Brian Dennehy
Linda Loman: Claire Higgins
Biff Loman: Douglas Henshall
Happy Loman: Mark Bazeley
Bernard: Jonathan Aris
The Woman: Abigail McKern
Charley: Howard Witt
Uncle Ben: Allen Hamilton
Howard Wagner: Steve Pickering
Jenny: Victoria Lennox
Stanley: Noah Lee Margetts
Miss Forsythe: Samantha Coughlan
Letta: Eleanor Howell
Director: Robert Falls
Designer: Mark Wendland
Lighting: Michael Philippi
Sound/Composer: Richard Woodbury
Costume: Birgit Rattenborg Wise
Voice: Joan Washington
Fight director: Terry King
Assistant director: Emma Stuart
Associate designer: Andy Edwards
Associate sound: John Owens
2005-05-18 14:44:01