Death of a Salesman

Synopsis

Veteran salesman Willy Loman is used to spending his life 'riding on a smile and a shoeshine', but recently things haven't been so good. He seems to have lost his golden touch; his grown-up sons, Biff and Happy, no longer idolise him as they used to and he is haunted by missed opportunities and a trouble past. His wife Linda is struggling to aid her increasingly disturbed husband, as she tries to hold the family together and keep Willy from descending further into desperation. But as the truth of Willy and his sons' imperfect past begins to unravel, Willy starts to lose faith in the two things he believes in: his family, and, in Miller's words, his need 'to leave a thumbprint somewhere on the world'. Death of a Salesman burst upon the international scene in 1949 and won the Drama Critics' Circle Award, the Tony Award and the Pulitzer Prize, becoming a benchmark for modern theatre.

Our Review:

4 May 2010

Arthur Miller’s 1949 Pulitzer-winning play is a powerful tragedy of the everyman, as travelling salesman Willy Loman’s crippling belief in the American Dream is exposed as corrosive, and his mantra “Be well liked and you will never want” is shown to be an ultimately contradictory notion.

Much like in Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, strains of the surreal bubble to the surface in Death of a Salesman, but Miller gives Willy’s subconscious greater prominence; interspersed with the present-day action, a small history of his hopes is played out in scenes where Willy plays ball with his sons Biff and Happy, and converses with wife Linda as a younger woman.

The creeping decline of Willy's life is painfully painted by a nuanced, authentic performance from Philip Jackson. He captures the flailing, helpless gestures of an aging man trapped by blind belief in the founding ideals of American endeavour, from the weary set of his shoulders, to the trace of sh...

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Latest User Review

mr mac - 9 May 2010:

My 14 year old daughter's first experience of Miller and she was absolutely blown away by this excellent production. I was left wishing my son had watched it wih me. ...

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