Reviews 2010
Reviews 2010
✭✭✭✩✩
by Arthur Miller, directed by Albert Schultz
Soulpepper Theatre Company, Young Centre, Toronto
September 16-November 20, 2010
Soulpepper’s first production of Death of a Salesman is surprisingly listless. It’s as if director Albert Schultz were trying to create a sense of quiet intensity but musters a quiet lethargy instead. The root cause is that Schultz has taken a far too generalized approach to a complex play.
Arthur Miller’s masterpiece is, of course, a classic of modern drama that at its premiere in 1949 provoked much debate whether there could be such a thing as a “tragedy” of the common man. (Americans conveniently forgot that bourgeois tragedy had been around in Europe since the middle of the 18th century.) Classical tragedy presents some kind of fall from a height. For travelling salesman Willy Loman (Joseph Ziegler), that height is the American Dream and his fall is his failure to achieve it--thus a fall in his own perception of himself. The play is a thoroughgoing critique of the emptiness of that dream and of the related notion--depressingly still relevant--that being “well liked” and good looking is more important than intellect and honesty in getting ahead.
Schultz’s main view of Loman is that he is tired and confused, talking to himself, imagining conversations with his absent, successful brother Ben (William Webster) and replaying key events from the past. Ziegler has proved on innumerable occasions what a fine actor he is, but under Schultz’s direction his performance is flat. He does not change his demeanour when he plays his younger self in the past and he gives no inkling he suspects what caused his younger son Biff (Ari Cohen) to fail in life. We see no reflection of the unfairness of Loman’s favouring Biff over his brother Happy (Tim Campbell) and Loman’s wife Linda (Nancy Palk) registers nothing when Loman shouts at her for trying to break into his “boys only” talks with his sons. The one scene that sparks with energy is when Loman pleads with his young boss Howard (Brendan Wall) for a non-travelling job only to be fired. The one cast member who glows with the kind of intensity they all should have is Cohen, whose agonized character determines to break down all the illusions Loman has built up about him. Those lucky enough to have seen the Stratford production in 1997 starring Al Waxman as Loman and Martha Henry as Linda, will have to cherish their memories and hope that a more detailed, more forceful production than Soulpepper’s will come along soon.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2010-10-25.
Photo: Joseph Ziegler and Nancy Palk. ©Cylla von Tiedemann.
2010-10-25
Death of a Salesman