DEATH OF A SALESMAN. To 29 November.
York.
DEATH OF A SALESMAN
by Arthur Miller.
Theatre Royal To 29 November 2008.
Tue-Sat 7.30pm Mat 20, 26, 27 Nov 2pm 22 Nov 2.30pm.
Audio-described 22 Nov 21.30pm, 28 Nov.
BSL Signed 26 Nov 7.30pm.
Captioned 22 Nov 2.30pm.
Runs 3hr One interval.
TICKETS: 01904 623568.
www.yorktheatreroyal.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 18 November.
A hopeless production – to its considerable credit.
This opens splendidly, with the sad, beaten figure of George Costigan’s salesman holding his suitcase of samples, dwarfed by a vista of American mountains. “It’s LUCKY when you live in America” runs a message beneath. For this is a hoarding, its colours reduced to the sepia-dominance of the Lucky lager it’s selling. Even the landscape’s branded in this consumerist society.
Flute music suggests wide-open spaces. And music, ranging from prairie openness to crushing atonality, plays a significant part in Damian Cruden’s expressionistic production of a drama Arthur Miller conceived on non-realistic lines. It rightly feels, in the ‘present-day’ scenes where Willy’s a broken-down 63-year old, like the inside of his head.
Designer Dawn Allsopp provides two towering jumbles of comfortless domesticity; a restless, uneasy place to live, the white refrigerator picking-up light especially at the end, representing society’s built-in obsolescence. Allsopp’s design opens to provide space, then, as when the reality of monthly accounts emerges, closes loomingly in.
Her two rotating clumps of walls, windows and stairs heaped in unnatural collusion, come together once, when Biff calls at his father’s hotel room and finds him with a floozy. For this is the key moment behind Willy’s eventual collapse, and the set soon flings apart to indicate this.
Costigan’s Loman is vehement in his triumphs and angered in his incomprehension. Hunched, puzzled or excessively cheery by turns, he’s flung around by circumstance. And pride. No-one’s helped here more than Willy. His neighbour lends money with no hope of its return, and offers a job the man’s too proud to take. Richard G Jones’ lighting makes the contrast between Willy high in an hotel-room having a fling with his nylon-seeking Woman, and wife Linda patiently seated in pale light on the ground, darning old stockings back home.
Eileen O’Brien doesn’t disguise Linda’s ordinariness; she’s the one who, for better or worse, discouraged Willy from his Alaskan adventure with brother Ben. Linda seems to become more grey and drained as the play proceeds. Willy seems to have done for all his sons too. As this strongly theatrical revival shows, there’s no hope left.
Willy Loman: George Costigan.
Linda Loman: Eileen O’Brien.
Biff: Joseph Rye.
Happy: Kieran Hill.
Charley: Jonathan Jaynes.
Miss Forsyth/Woman: Mitzi Thaddeus.
Uncle Ben: Kevin McGowan.
Howard/Stanley: Phillip Langthorne.
Letta/Jenny: Sophie Abelson.
Bernard: Steven Kynman.
Children’s Voices: William Osbourne, Maddie Dauby.
Director: Damian Cruden.
Designer: Dawn Allsopp.
Lighting: Richard G Jones.
Music: Chris Madin.
Voice coach: Susan Stern.
Dialect advisor: Mitzi Thaddeus.
Fight advisor: Jonathan Jaynes.
2008-11-20 12:01:44