SHERIDAN MORLEY
18 May 2005
The Daily Express
Death of a Salesman, Lyric Theatre, London
Only weeks after the death of its author Arthur Miller, the play that truly made his name back in 1948 has arrived in the West End.
And it can be seen now as not only his masterpiece but also ours - the greatest play of the American century and arguably even in world theatre of that time.
Brian Dennehy repeats the Chicago performance that rightly won him a Tony Award five years ago on Broadway.
But the revelation of this production is its realisation of what the play is really about.
At its centre is the suicidal Willy Loman, out there riding on no more than a smile and a shoeshine. This is still the tragedy of a salesman for whom there is nothing left to sell, set against a backdrop of a country back from the Second World War to try to survive the peace.
For that reason, Mark Wendland's set is cluttered with random junk furniture, none of it looking as though it belongs anywhere very much.
And the reason this is an alltime American tragedy is that in the centre of it all stands Willy. He is loaded down with suitcases of samples, the nature of which is never revealed, losing the race to the scrapheap as his struggle for existence merges into a fantasy world in which he and both his loser sons are triumphant, and all the world loves a laugh.
In a more benevolent script, Willy would have died one Sunday afternoon polishing his beloved car, all his fantasies still intact.
But in forcing through the realisation that his life has been a hollow charade - in which he carries on an extramarital relationship with The Woman (Abigail McKern) - Miller also forces through the awareness of something nightmarish at the heart of the American dream.
In three hours we get a lifetime of Willy, and from the very beginning we are really waiting for him to die.
When he does, not even his widow can cry.
All she can do is note the last payment on the mortgage has that day been made.
Clare Higgins heads the English cast, directed by Robert Falls, which joins Dennehy and the original Americans. And like Douglas Henshall as Biff and Mark Bazeley as Happy, she manages to bring together a spirit of integrity and coherence.
Willy's tragedy is that he feels kind of temporary about himself; the brilliance of this production is to suggest that 55 years ago America also felt that way about itself.