DEATH OF A SALESMAN. To 6 March.
Edinburgh
DEATH OF A SALESMAN
by Arthur Miller
Royal Lyceum Theatre To 6 March 2004
Tue-Sat 7.45pm
Runs 2hr 50min One interval
TICKETS: 0131 248 4848
Review: Timothy Ramsden 28 February
This director and cast can sell me a used script any day.Director John Dove always gets the best from actors, revealing a play's truth rather than overlaying it with interpretative concepts. That's certainly true of this superb revival, well up to the high standards the senior US author's receiving in British regional theatre this season.
And true of Paul Jesson's Willy Loman. A lumbering creature, it's not the American Dream does for him, but his illusion it's all true. It gives him a sense of unreality not afflicting his boss Howard (Greg Powrie confidently-styled and casually callous) and neighbour Charley (Tony Boncza, earthing Willy's fantasy in good-humoured reality with a finely-crafted performance), who accommodate self-interest within reasonable lives. Instead Willy sums up the spirit of explorer brother Ben (Sandy Neilson catching the character's actual unreality alongside his vivid presence for Willy, his increasingly empty-sounding mantra of self-reliance echoing in Willy's head).
Machines work for other people it's the Loman fridge that breaks down, Willy who sets a tape-recorder playing out-of-control. As time boomerangs back-and-forth Jesson's bewildered bear moves between openly confident smiling and a present-day stoop, defeat and incomprehension weighing on his shoulders, pushing the head enquiringly forward.
His confidence, without a material base, disables his sons. The Loman brothers' is another illusion, disconnected from reality, as they drift through life. Alex Hassell takes his name literally, ever-smiling, never understanding. And Steven Duffy's Biff contrasts the split relation with his father, energy and attachment before, silenced resentment after, discovering Willy's woman on the side a secret as petty and shameful as his own life becomes.
In a fine, lived-in performance, Joanna Tope doesn't make the famous attention must be paid' a clarion call, but a quiet statement of love a voice so quiet her husband never reaches the point Peer Gynt perceives, that his self lies in the person who quietly loves him. It's in this failure that a mark of the detail making this a riveting evening Jesson's initial puzzlement as he confuses cars present and past develops to the deep, lost look of the salesman who realises his life is the only thing he has left to sell.
Willy Loman: Paul Jesson
Linda: Joanna Tope
Biff: Steven Duffy
Happy: Alex Hassell
Bernard: Jim Webster
The Woman: Isabella Jarrett
Letta/Jenny: Katrina Bryan
Charley: Tony Boncza
Uncle Ben: Sandy Neilson
Howard/Stanley: Greg Powrie
Miss Forsythe: Lucy Paterson
Director: John Dove
Designer: Michael Taylor
Lighting: Jeanine Davies
Movement: Malcolm Shields
Accent coach: Lynn Bains
2004-03-03 07:15:49