When the great critic John Mason Brown wrote about Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, he skirted a detailed “analysis” of the writing this way: “When hit in the face, you do not bother to count the knuckles which strike you. All that matters, all you remember, is the staggering impact of the blow.” When it opened in 1949, Death of a Salesman was indeed a wallop of a play. And two generations later, it still packs a formidable punch.
But the Milwaukee Rep’s solid production of this great American classic shows that times indeed have changed. In some ways, it’s more important than ever to see Miller’s affecting melding of “Tragedy and the Common Man,” as powerful an indictment of the mythic American Dream as has ever been penned. But today, Willy’s confused blend of doomsaying and optimism have a different quality. In 1949, the war was over, the economic boom was gaining steam, and Willy seemed to have a chance. The postwar generation—the Bernards and the Howards—had assumed its place, and Willy just had to play the right game to grab his little piece of the new prosperity. Today—at least in director Mark Clements’ take on Salesman—that possibility seems remote. Tragedy indeed requires a sense of inevitability, but if we feel that Willy is doomed from the start, this salesman’s dreams are mere pipedreams, like the ones drowning in liquor in Harry Hope’s saloon.
As if to reinforce those ties to the Greek tragedy, Lee Ernst plays Willy with the heightened style of a true classicist. One of the unconventional things about Miller’s central character is that he’s already gone when we meet him. And we journey through three hours of drama to find out how he got there, and to see attempts to save him fail again and again. In some ways, Ernst plays Willy like one long mad scene, a Lear on the Brooklyn heath, his bluster and anger always overflowing, even when he’s in the most intimate moments with his wife Linda, the steady calm to his storm. Ernst gives us Willy’s whirlwind of conflicting ideas and emotions, the abrupt turns from bleak despair to sunny optimism. He digs deep into the confusion, and surfaces with a harrowing portrait of a man out of balance. But what’s missing is a glimmer of Willy’s charm, the personality that once made him “well-liked.” Even if Willy was never the storied, bathrobe-clad, Dave Singleman, who made his living from a hotel room until he was eighty-four, he had something going for him.
Ernst is surrounded by a first rate cast, including Rep Company members Laura Gordon, Jonathan Gillard Daly, Deborah Staples, Gerry Neugent, and Mark Corkins. Gordon does some of her best work in years, completely embodying the supportive “pal” that suggests the specifics of their relationship (as well as the classic 1950s marriage). She delivers the iconic “attention must be paid” speech with touching reserve. And watch her when Willy gets excited about his sons’ plans, and he tells her again and again to keep quiet: even when subject to Willy’s casual verbal abuse, any hurt is veiled by the touching optimism that sets her face aglow.
Reese Madigan brings a touching vulnerability to Biff. And Neugent is spot on as the maddingly shallow Hap. Daly, Corkins, Staples, Michael Kroeker (Bernard) and Guy Massey (Howard) tackle their supporting roles with intelligence.
Salesman is essentially the dramatic directing debut for the Rep’s new Artistic Director, Mark Clements (this year he also directed the musical, Cabaret, and the one-woman show Bombshells, which is a different animal than an ensemble piece like Salesman). As with Cabaret, Clements uses the challenging space of the Powerhouse Theatre well, adhering to Miller’s wishes that the play be staged on two levels (beautifully realized in Todd Rosenthal’s set design), and creating a flow of action through the set that captures the dreamlike nature of the story. He and his actors find the dramatic core of most scenes, but some—like the graveside speeches at the end of the play—seem unmoored and a bit shapeless. Most important, he seems to trust his actors to do the right thing, and in this powerful version of an American classic, they do.
