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Written
by
Arthur Miller
Directed
by
Robert Falls
Designed
by
Mark Wendland
Composer
and Sound
Richard Woodbury
Performers
Willy Loman
Brian Dennehey
Linda
Loman
Clare Higgins
Biff
Loman
Douglas Henshall
Happy
Loman
Mark Bazeley
Bernard
Jonathan
Aris
The
Woman
Abigail McKern
Charley
Howard Witt
Uncle
Ben
Allen Hamilton
Howard
Wagner
Steve Pickering
Jenny
Victoria
Lennox
Stanley
Noah Lee
Margetts
Miss
Forsythe
Samantha
Coughlin
Letta
Eleanor Howell
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Lyric
Theatre
From
10 May 2005 |
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It almost
passes comprehension how the
cast of this excoriating play
can repeat their performances
night after night, so exhausting
must it be to relive the tragedy,
the poignancy and the heart-break
in Arthur Miller's truly great
play - the tragedy of great
failure in small lives, the
poignancy in the collapse
of dreams, the heart-ache
in disappointed expectation
- and all three in love's
bitterness and profound mercies.
The fact that the cast do
it so brilliantly is testament
to the sheer weight of talent
assembled on the stage. There
are too few hyperboles in
the lexicon to give proper
due to the performances of
Brian Dennehey as Willy Loman,
Clare Higgins as Linda, Douglas
Henshall as Biff, Mark Bazeley
as Hap, Abigail McKern as
The Woman, and Howard Witt
as Charley. Each is absolutely
outstanding. If one could
turn power and truth in acting
into something physical, like
a tower of gold, what this
cast does would reach the
sun. And that understates
matters.
Grant that the play itself
- the words on the page; Miller's
acute insights and embracing
sympathies, and the miraculous
accuracy and economy of his
writing - is a work of genius
and a classic, and then add
that to realise it on stage
requires from the cast the
highest order of stamina,
intelligence, skill and emotional
depth, and one has justification
for saying that this production
of 'Death of a Salesman' is
one of the best and greatest
things to happen on the London
stage for many years.
In fact the West End has seen
some remarkable theatre during
the last couple of years,
recorded with pleasure in
this magazine: but this 'Salesman'
has to go to the top of the
list. At the performance's
end an emotionally-wrung audience
staggered into the cool May
night touched, awed and chastened,
for they did not feel that
they had been so much at a
play as on a psychological
journey - a journey into the
heart of very painful relationships,
and thence into the pit of
a crisis of human failure,
making them close-up witnesses
of something inexorable, inescapable,
and heart-stoppingly moving.
Brian Dennehey's superbly
portrayed Willy Loman is massive
and broken, like something
that has exploded and has
unsuccessfully tried to self-reassemble,
only to achieve a frightening
disorder among the fragments.
Willy is breaking up and breaking
down, he wants and needs to
die, he is racked by guilt
and regret, he is haunted
by the hollowness of his self-aggrandisement
and posturing - and when the
son he has burdened with too
much expectation finds that
he is an adulterer and a fake,
the tragedy for them both
is complete, even though not
for fifteen more years final.
Dennehey carries the entire
structure of the play on his
broad but bent back, and there
is something remarkable in
the counterpoint between his
wavering among reality, fantasy
and memory, and the cool Greek
Chorus observation of Charley,
beautifully - exquisitely
- played by Howard Witt.
But without Linda and Biff,
and the marginalised Hap -
in each case wonderfully played:
Clare Higgins' Linda, Douglas
Henshall's Biff and Mark Bazeley's
Hap all merit prizes - the
point of Willy's defeat would
not be so needle sharp, for
the Loman family constitutes
the universe into which Willy's
failure resounds. The notional
world of Boston and beyond,
where the buyers lurk who
increasingly ignore Willy
and who anyway were never
the friends he claimed they
were - only his family, Charley
and Bernard attend his funeral
- are part of the source of
the tragedy, but not its primary
theatre. For if it had not
been for his family as audience
of his life and hopes, and
for the false premises on
which Willy raised his sons
and especially the adored
golden schoolboy and high
school football star Biff,
the elusiveness of the mystery
of success would never have
plagued Willy so, nor would
the failure of his dreams
have proved so rancid and,
in the end, fatal.
The direction and design of
this superb production are
major factors in its success.
Robert Falls has found every
nerve of the play and like
an anatomist brought it into
the light; his grasp of the
story Miller aimed to tell
shows how rich it is - in
a tragedy of this scope there
cannot be just one or two
interconnections, but many,
between the things that give
a life the moral quality it
assumes when its crisis is
reached. Clever use of the
Lyric's stage possibilities
and lighting mean that transitions
between memory and actuality
are kept crystal clear, and
the whole movement of the
narrative is seamless and
perspicuous, no mean achievement
in a work of this complexity.
But it is the acting that
takes the laurels. Miller's
text needs a response of genius
to bring its own genius into
view, and it gets it here.
It would be no surprise to
find that Dennehey, Higgins,
Henshall, Bazeley and Witt
feel that Falls's 'Salesman'
has offered them a supreme
opportunity; they unquestionably
and admirably take it to the
full.
This is unequivocally a must-see
production, a great theatrical
event, a West End moment that
will stay permanently in the
memory of everyone who sees
it. This reviewer, for one,
will go again, and again.
AC
Grayling |
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