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:

17 May 2005

In 2003, Whatsonstage.com theatregoers voted Arthur Miller the world’s greatest living playwright. This first West End production of one of his plays since he passed away in February, aged 89, not only proves why he deservedly earned the accolade, but also happens to have greatness scorched all over it.

Death of a Salesman may just be one of the greatest American plays of the last century, and this production – first staged at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre in 1998 and then on Broadway the following year – may also be one of the best acted productions you will ever see of it, too.

It’s true that the expansive width and height of the design by Mark Wendland, which fitted magnificently on the stage of the Eugene O’Neill Theatre in New York, looks a little squashed on the Lyric stage, creates occasional sightline problems for those sitting in side seats, and operates a little too noisily. It’s regrettable, too, that miking was thought necessary in a thea...

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Latest User Review

62.252.64.30) - 1 November 2005:

i don't think this is the greatest play of all time but i do thin that you cannot fault the performances of BrianDennehy & Claire Higginson. Anyone who misses it will regret it in the future. If you have ever had a relative with a severe problem such as Alzheimers then evry movement that Dennehy makes is enough to break your heart- look past the volume & feel the flutters...

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