The Show, September 3, 2012

Nancy Palk (photo by Cylla von Tiedemann)

Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman is not only a play, it is a monument: a brilliant model of everything that works in modern theatre. It treats time as it wants. It tells a compelling story. It uses an average man like the Greeks used heroes - showing them as victims of destiny. It strikes universal themes: love and betrayal, sons and fathers, family. 

But make no mistake: as the work's title suggests, it is first and foremost about a small man in a downward spiral. From its opening lyrical moments to its inevitable close, you see Willy Loman as already drowning and it is merely a question of how many of his loved ones - his sons or wife - he will pull down with him. Men, especially, will tell you how they are always brutalized by the troubled relationship Willy has with his boys but Salesman is also a great love story and Linda Loman one of the most convincingly written female characters of the last century. As much as Willy is actor-bait, Linda is one of the great roles, reminding one of the many great women of theatre who saw their husbands' flaws even as they loyally defended them. (Inge's Lola in Come Back, Little Sheba springs immediately to mind.)

The tragedy of everyone in Salesman - particularly apt in this age of big business spinning all of our lives out of control - is their smallness. And in the final words of Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller, through Linda, rescues us all from that tragedy. We will not give those words away because if you have never experienced this work, do...now.