Death of a Salesman

Everything they're saying about this revival of "Death of a Salesman" is true. I can't imagine this play being more honest, urgent and gut wrenching than this 2026 Broadway revival.

I'm assuming that most people reading this are familiar with Miller's masterpiece. The play originally premiered on Broadway in 1949 and tells the story of the Loman family. Willy Loman, the patriarch, is a traveling salesman. Once (relatively) successful, well liked and well known, with a loving wife (Linda) and two sons, Biff (the older, star athlete "golden boy"), and Happy (the charming younger brother.) When the story begins, Willy is pretty much on his last leg. He's suffering from some unnamed medical conditions that are making it unsafe for him to be driving as much as he needs to. He's older, and desperately needs to retire (which he can't), or be transferred to a local or desk job at the company he's faithfully served for decades. He and Linda are up to their ears in debt they can't get out of, and their sons are living with them - neither having fulfilled the promise they showed when they were younger. Though I hesitate doing so, wikipedia has a fantastic summary on the genesis of this piece that I'm just going to go ahead and quote here:

"The genesis of the play was a chance encounter between Miller and his uncle Manny Newman, a salesman, whom he met in 1947 in the lobby of a Boston theater that was playing "All My Sons". Miller later recounted that when he saw Manny at the theater, "I could see the grim hotel room behind him, the long trip up from New York in his little car, the hopeless hope of the day's business." Without acknowledging Miller's greeting or congratulating him on the play, Manny said "Buddy is doing very well." Buddy was Manny's son, and Manny saw Miller and his older brother as "running neck and neck" with his two sons "in some race that never stopped in his mind." When visiting Manny as a youth, Miller felt "gangling and unhandsome" and usually heard "some kind of insinuation of my entire life's probable failure." Seeing him again in Boston, Manny seemed to the playwright to be "absurd" and "so elaborate in his fantastic inventions," that "he possessed my imagination." Manny died by suicide soon after.

Miller had been thinking about a play about a salesman for years. He also had new interest in the simultaneity of the past and present. Miller sought to "do a play without any transitions at all, dialogue that would simply leap from bone to bone of a skeleton that would not for an instant cease being added to, an organism as strictly economic as a leaf, as trim as an ant." Miller was himself the model of the young Bernard."

Nathan Lane (Willy), Jake Termine (Young Happy) and Joaquin Consuelos (Young Biff)

The piece was a seminal work of American tragedy. Ask any university theater teacher, and they will talk about how theater in New York in the 1930's - early 1950's (specifically as it was centered in The Group Theater) and, specifically as it related to "...Salesman" changed the way we think about theatrical tragedy. Traditionally the only people "worthy" of being the center of a "Great Tragedy" were high, important figures. Kings. When people talked of tragedies they thought of Shakespeare and the Greek epics. Hamlet, Oedipus, etc. "...Salesman" was a Greek or Shakespearian tragedy...about a common man. It elevated the lowest of society's low to the place of kings and said that their stories were just as important. 

Never has this piece felt more relevant, at least in my lifetime, than it does in the production at the Winter Garden Theatre. In the 1980's, 1990's and early 2000's it felt like a bit of a relic. In an age of economic growth and prosperity (at least in the West), one couldn't help feeling, at least a little bit, that Loman was in this situation, at least partially, because of his own choices and actions. Certainly Biff and Happy were. I mean, who would take a job that didn't have a 401K and retirement? 

Laurie Metcalf (Linda) and Nathan Lane (Willy)

But in the subsequent decades it's become painfully clear how off that thinking was. The way corporations now blatantly use and discard workers, the complete inconsequentialness of most university degrees, heck, even the Lomans complaining about how their new refrigerator is designed to break the second it's paid off brings to mind law suits agains Apple's iPhones. They only way they can ever hope to pay off their house and car is by some magical windfall of money. And this is after Loman has been working inhuman hours with no break for decades. Not to mention the scene where it becomes painfully clear just how disposable his company thinks Loman is. 

There is much backstory that we learn as the piece develops... how the Lomans went from sunnier days to this, how Biff lost a massive football scholarship, etc. And they are all things that every one of us are now dealing with, for real, in our own lives.

The set design here by Chloe Lamford (with Associate Scenic Design by Edward Pierce) is brilliant for many reasons. The one that perhaps stuck with me the most is the realization that in this day and age, especially with the millennial and gen Z generations, it is incredibly important not to have the set be a literal recreation of the Loman house. Back when the play first premiered it was easy to see the house as Miller intended it - a small, very modest home, falling apart, with no view of the sky and somewhere that is stifling to live in. Today, sadly, all it takes is the presence of a staircase and a curio cabinet to signal to members of the audience that this is, in some ways, the height of luxury. In going back and viewing previous films of "...Salesman" it is hard to view those homes (and the costumes where Biff and Happy are wearing what seem to us to be beautiful dressing gowns) to feel like the Lomans really should stop complaining. They're doing WELL. Because, today, the fact is that almost no millennials or gen z - ers will ever own their own studio apartment, much less a house. In creating a space that looks industrial, covered in dirt, and only has lighting design and a couple of benches and chairs to delineate the space, we are allowed to let the text and our imaginations create the Loman home... and we are therefore able to experience it in the starkness that Miller intended. The set is also crafted in such a way that it allows for characters to literally appear and disappear before our very eyes. It's truly incredible.

The other design elements are fantastic too. The lighting (Jack Knowles) helps us differentiate where we are in time, with flashbacks seemingly all happening in some "golden afternoon" of long ago, and the present day slipping further and further into darkness. The costumes (Rudy Mance) and props are excellent - giving a timeless quality that makes the play very applicable to NOW, while still allowing us to buy the piece being set in the past.

Laurie Metcalf (Linda), Christopher Abbot (Biff) and Ben Ahlers (Happy)

The acting is superb. I don't think anyone doubted that Laurie Metcalf would be spectacular, as she always is. She manages to make "Great Famous Theater Lines" not sound "Famous" at all, but rather as completely organic and natural. Likewise Christopher Abbot (Biff) and Ben Ahlers (Happy) are phenomenal and bring very clear layers and deep human depth, clarity and grounding to these roles. Biff and Happy are doubled here with Young Biff and Young Happy being played by Joaquin Consuelos and Jake Termine respectively. They are equally fantastic.

There was much debate about Nathan Lane taking on the role of Willy. Willy is traditionally played by a Great Dramatic Leading Actor (Dustin Hoffman and Brian Dennehy immediately come to mind for their famous film portrayals.) Lane, known for his comedy and quirk, was not the first person you traditionally think of for this role. But it turns out he's perfect casting. Willy is described as short (his height is a great source of insecurity), charming, well liked...all things that Lane is. One of the tragedies of this piece is that Willy is simply no longer being treated as such. What happens when Nathan Lane is no longer charming anyone, even though his "schtick" is as on point as ever. It drives home the fall of Willy that much harder. 

My money is hands down on everyone in this show winning Tony Awards for everything. 

The supporting cast is phenomenal as well. I especially liked Karl Green (Young Bernard) and Michael Benjamin Washington (Bernard) and how they so beautifully shared the role. Bernard is Biff's childhood friend, and the son of Willy's friend Charlie (another favorite of mine played by K. Todd Freeman). In his youth, Bernard is a bit of a "nerd". He studies hard, but admires the jocks - sneaking Biff the answers to tests and joyfully carrying his gear so he can get into the locker room. When he grows up, his studious nature (and kind heart) pay off. He becomes a lawyer arguing before the Supreme Court. Willy has to constantly talk Biff up, exaggerating his achievements. As Charlie says, Bernard doesn't need to talk about anything he's doing...because he's DOING it. 

Laurie Metcalf (Linda) and Nathan Lane (Willy)

It is notable that Charlie and Bernard are played by actors of color in this production. One of the most challenging moments in the play, dramaturgically, is when Charlie, who has been helping Willy out with money for some time, finds out that Willy has been fired, and offers Willy a job at exactly the salary he needs in order to comfortably stay afloat. Willy turns him down for no other reason that "I just can't take a job from you." Traditionally this is chalked up to Willy's pride, and insecurity. When Charlie is played by a black man it suddenly has painful, I would say undertones, but it's clear as a bell, of racism. It helps the piece. Willy has spent his whole life somewhat arbitrarily (and often with poor judgement) looking down on certain people and idolizing others. His treatment of Charlie drives this point home, and is another nail in the coffin of Willy's tragedy - this one especially disconcerting because he's 100% bringing it on himself.  The balance Freeman manages to strike between strength, and pride, and compassion and gentleness is hard to reach. But he does it, and it is quite profound.

Tasha Lawrence also strikes a great balance as The Woman - Loman's "girl on the road" that he's been having an affair with for quite some time. She must serve in the memory of some characters as an almost Evil Stepmother character... a "floozy" in the worst, most vapid and cruel way. But Lawrence also lets us see real colors of the woman underneath, who is perhaps trapped in a story no one gave her the "Cliff Notes" for. 

You can always trust Joe Mantello to steward a great production (this year he is nominated against himself for the Tony for Best Director - both for this and "Little Bear Ridge Road".) The man directed this and "Wicked", there's pretty much nothing he can't do or elevate. 

I highly suggest seeing this production if you can. It is a play everyone should know in a production that centers clarity, immediacy and applicability. The tragedy here is that we are all, in one way or another, the Loman family... and it's a real tragedy that going on 100 years after it was originally written, we haven't come very far at all... 

Beth Hartley

DEATH OF A SALESMAN is currently playing at the Winter Garden Theatre on Broadway