Review: Death of a Salesman at Liverpool Everyman ***1/2
Arthur Miller compared it to a Greek tragedy while influential 20th Century American theatre critic John Gassner called its chief protagonist ‘a King Lear in mufti’.
Death of a Salesman, the second of Miller’s quartet of major plays penned over the course of eight post-war years, channels both, albeit into the story of an ordinary ('low') man.
Miller wove his cautionary tale in naturalistic dialogue juxtaposed with dream-like flashbacks and reminiscences (he initially thought of titling it The Inside of His Head). And this new Everyman production of the American classic seizes on that to offer its audience a vivid and intense sensory experience.
This is not the first Death of a Salesman to present the play’s chief protagonist Willy Loman as African American. Wendell Pierce notably played the role on Broadway and the West End a few years ago to much acclaim.
But as well as giving the core narrative an additional layer, director Tristan Fynn-Aiduenu’s exploration of heritage and race also includes the distinctive echo of ancestral culture, evoked in part by Adelaide Banks’ haunting, fluting, masked wraith.
What is The American Dream? The belief that no matter who you are or what your background, you can achieve success through merit and ability, hard work and determination.
Travelling salesman Willy Loman (Cyril Nri) has certainly spent his life being hardworking. But now in his early 60s, he is weary. Once successful, even through the hardscrabble Depression years, he feels passed over and is secretly borrowing money to main the illusion that he is doing well. And image for Willy is everything.
Desperate to be liked and respected, and obsessed not just with success but with the image of success, it makes his disintegration all the more painful and pitiful.
For a bewildered and hubristic Willy, the loss of optimism and of his faith in the American Dream which he has pursued so doggedly proves catastrophic, ending in a tragic, and ultimately futile, act of self-sacrifice. Even that is reasoned away in business terms as “a sound proposition.”
Above: Willy Loman (Cyril Nri) flanked by sons Biff (Laurence Ubong Williams) and Happy (Kiren Kebaili-Dwyer). Top: Nri as Willy. Photos by Ali Wright.
He yo-yos erratically between wild enthusiasm and deep despair as he descends into his own American nightmare. Hats off to Nri because while it’s exhausting to watch, it must be doubly so to perform and sustain over the play's lengthy running time.
Willy idealises eldest son Biff (Laurence Ubong Williams), who struggles in the face of such high expectations, and mostly neglects younger son Happy (Kiren Kebaili-Dwyer) who is the one who ends up seeming to have achieved all-important success. Even if inside he is emotionally empty.
In turn, as boys, both brothers idolise their father. Which gives their later disavowal of him extra sting.
The Loman nuclear family is completed by devoted and despairing wife Linda (Emma Cater), who here appears to be of Irish heritage (it's not actually spelt out), adding yet a further potential, if ultimately unexplored, dynamic.
The first act is the more gripping as the family tries to understand and manage its patriarch’s manic mood changes.
Separately, Ubong Williams delivers a quietly compelling and thoughtfully calibrated performance as the erstwhile golden boy who, unlike his bullish father and brother, seems willing to confront his own shortcomings – and ultimately to make peace with them.
Meanwhile the Loman family home may be in Brooklyn, but the simmering, oppressive atmosphere, augmented by light and sound design, has more than a hint of the febrile southern landscape of a Tennessee Williams tale.
In the second half, running to a marathon one hour 40 minutes, the delusional Willy’s spiralling descent accelerates, fuelled by a series of brutal rejections, although repeated languorous hallucinatory appearances by his mythically successful late brother Ben (Tayo Aluko) make the narrative propulsion rather start-stop.
Above: Loman with devoted wife Linda (Emma Cater). Photo by Ali Wright.
Miller’s story is set in the late 1940s, and the production presents it in its established period, flashbacks and all. Which makes the unexpected and anachronistic appearance of the trappings of the 21st Century – vape, laptop, lanyard, mobile phone – jarring and confusing.
These items all belong to Cater’s Linda - wife, mother, cheerleader, cajoler, scrimper, shrink, family chief executive and, plot wise, emotional anchor. As a woman in a story concerned principally with male mental health she remains mostly overlooked.
Her unshakable loyalty is taken for granted and little rewarded. Worse than that, it is betrayed. And in one frustrating scene she’s belittled and repeatedly shut down when she attempts to speak.
Miller deliberately gives her that opportunity in the story’s ‘Requiem’ where it is Linda who delivers the play's final lines.
And yet, here even that one small moment is denied her as she is immediately followed by those ancestral echoes, swirling back on to stage for one last bit of interpretive dance. It's superfluous to the moment, and feels like a final kick in the teeth for the character. I for one was left fiercely aggrieved on Linda's behalf!
Still, if at times the narrative feels somewhat overwhelmed by all these various concepts, ideas and devices, amid them there's still space to appreciate Fynn-Aiduenu's claustrophobic and feverish interpretation of Miller's powerful tale.