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by Arthur Miller, directed by Dean Gabourie

Stratford Festival, Avon Theatre, Stratford

May 28–October 24, 2026

Biff: “Will you take that phony dream and burn it before something happens?”

No matter what your plans are this summer, you must see Death of a Salesman at the Stratford Festival. It is Stratford’s finest production of an American play since the legendary Long Day’s Journey Into Night of 1994. The direction is insightful, the design is excellent and Tom McCamus is magnificent as Willy Loman.

One reason we revisit the classic drama is to discover how people before us framed questions we mistakenly believe are contemporary. Death of a Salesman has long been viewed as a critique of the American Dream, an ideal that stems from the statement in the US Declaration of Independence that all people have the right to “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”. The phrase, popularized by James Truslow Adams in 1931, defined the American Dream as “a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position”.

This is the dream Willy Loman believes in. When this ideal proves false, Willy can no longer understand the world. Miller shows that Willy’s older son Biff, who has yet to amount to anything, realizes the Dream is impossible. Not everyone can be a success. Not everyone can rise to the top. In fact, the vast majority will not and like Willy will literally be a “low man”. Though never stated outright, Willy and his younger son Happy also believe in social Darwinism, the notion that success belongs to the strongest. This is why Willy keeps praising his sons for how physically strong they are, how handsome they are and how attractive they are to women.

Listening to Willy speak this way today, we can easily see how the inherent misogyny of these remarks can easily slide into racism, xenophobia and disdain for intellect. Miller demonstrates the foolishness of this belief by contrasting Loman’s no good sons with their neighbour’s son Bernard. Good looks and muscles don’t get the two very far. Bernard who keeps urging Biff to study hard, becomes a lawyer who is to argue a case before the Supreme Court.

As Willy sums it up to his sons, “I thank Almighty God you’re both built like Adonises. Because the man who makes an appearance in the business world, the man who creates personal interest, is the man who gets ahead. Be liked and you will never want”. But as he gets older, Willy comes to see that being liked is no key to success, especially when those who liked you retire or die off. In a chilling remark, Willy blames tough times on the increase of the population: “There’s more people! That’s what’s ruining this country!”

In a career of great performances Willy Loman may be Tom McCamus’s greatest. Simply from the way he makes his first entrance shuffling in carrying two heavy sample cases we can tell Willy is exhausted not merely from work but from life. McCamus has Willy slur his speech slightly as if the man were too worn out to articulate properly. He has Willy rage too readily as if he were becoming emotional labile with age. In previous productions of Salesman, I assumed Willy’s conversations with his dead Uncle Ben or his flashbacks to the past were only Willy’s recalling of former events. In this production Dean Gabourie makes clear that Willy is not merely old and tired but is sliding into dementia.

One signal of this is a scene where Linda Willy helps Willy into his jacket to go to work, only for him to slough it off again. This happens more than once as if Willy has forgotten why he is supposed to be wearing a jacket. The way McCamus has Willy look about him after a flashback as if Willy doesn’t know where he is and the way McCamus has Willy voice internal argument with absent people all point not merely to age (he is only 63) but to mental disturbance. Significantly, in flashbacks, McCamus depicts Willy as free of signs of physical and mental decline.

What McCamus does especially well is to show how poor a liar Willy is. He has Willy bluster and give multiple excuses when one would do. In such interactions McCamus inadvertently shows others both that he is lying and that he knows those he lies to also knows he is lying. This is particularly evident in the great scene where Willy tries to explain to Biff why he has a woman in his hotel room. Tom McCamus’s performance is the first time I have ever seen Willy played with such nuance, insight and pathos.

Lucy Peacock shows that Linda is also a complex character. Peacock makes clear that Linda’s extreme protectiveness of Willy includes protecting him from the truth. She ignores Willy’s dismissive treatment of her, which so angers her sons, and is quite ready to hurl insults at them — “You’re a pair of animals! — when they do or say anything negative to Willy. Lucy shows that Linda knows Willy is in decline without seeing that allowing him to live in a protective bubble at home does not help him. Linda’s surprise at the low attendance at Willy’s funeral suggests that Linda, too, is caught up in Willy’s dream. Peacock gives a moving account of Linda’s speech at Willy’s grave that despite her claims to know what Willy was thinking, her own fictions she has spun to protect him have prevented her from seeing him clearly herself.

What Gabourie makes especially clear is that the play’s central conflict is between Willy and his older son Biff. While the action moves forward in time showing Willy suffer one blow to his ego after another, it moves back in time to uncover the mystery of why Biff, who had such a positive start in life, suddenly sabotaged his future and now can find nothing to do with his life. Joe Perry gives a strong, passionate performance as Biff that explores not merely his anger at Willy but a self-loathing he cannot escape.

Josh Johnston demonstrates that Willy’s younger son Happy has completely imbibed Willy’s lessons about the how important the superficial things are in life. Like Willy, he constantly lies about his achievements and believes that good looks, physical strength and bedding women are keys to success. Johnston gives Happy a smiling face and easy manner even as his lies becomes more egregious. Depressingly, even at the end, it seems that Happy has learned nothing from the course of Willy’s life.

The entire ensemble is strong. David W. Keeley is the mysterious but compelling ghost of Willy’s Uncle Ben, whose lucky way to success informs Willy’s dreams of what is possible in life. Matthew Kabwe gives us a fine portrait of Willy’s neighbour Charley, who feels compassion for a man as lost as Willy, a man not too proud to accept handouts but foolishly too proud to accept a job from him. Raymond Strachan is excellent as Charley’s bright, studious son Bernard, who fails Willy’s test of being “well liked” and therefore is discarded as anyone to emulate. Strachan does a fine job of distinguishing Bernard as a nerdy youth and Bernard as a piercingly intelligent lawyer.

As Howard Wagner, Sean Arbuckle plays what is the most painful scene in the drama when Willy comes to him to ask for an advance and a roster of local clients so he won’t have to travel. Arbuckle brilliantly depicts Howard’s inner battle of anger and pity for Willy as he braces himself to deal Willy what he knows will be a coup de grâce.

The text of the play calls for flute music to begin the action. Gabourie has substituted a trumpet for a flute and Michael Louis Johnson as its player. As you enter the auditorium of the Avon Theatre Johnson is already on stage playing the trumpet and commenting of the tunes he plays. He delivers one of the best Land Acknowledgements I’ve heard in the theatre and one of the most compelling admonitions for audience member to silence all devices. He wanders on stage and plays tunes during scene changes and appears at Willy’s funeral. All of this lends Johnson the role of psychopomp, the spirit who leads a person from life into death, since what else is happening in the play as per its title but a journey into death.

Willy complains that the house he and Linda almost own is becoming surrounded by apartment buildings that are cutting off the light. Set designer Scott Penner takes his cue from this and has created a set of four-storey-tall apartment building façades as high as the proscenium for the back and two sides of the stage. They intentionally tower over the carried-on kitchen and bedroom furniture to show how insignificant the Lomans have become. The buildings, however, are not so substantial that they cannot part for the entrance of the spectral Uncle Ben. Lighting designer Louise Guinand has the windows in the buildings light up in different pattern and colours to indicate the mood, location and time of day of the many scenes.

Death of a Salesman is one of the great plays of the 20th century. I have never seen a better production of the play than the present one at Stratford, and I find it hard to believe that I will ever see one that supersedes it. Again and again I was struck by Arthur Miller’s genius and by the skill and passion Dean Gabourie and his cast brought to bringing that genius so vividly to life.

Christopher Hoile

Photos: Tom McCamus as Willy Loman and Lucy Peacock as Linda Loman, © 2026 Davod Hou; Tom McCamus as Willy Loman, © 2026 Dariane Sanche; Tom McCamus as Willy Loman and David W. Keeley as Uncle Ben; Joe Perry as Biff and Tom McCamus as Willy Loman; Matthew Kabwe as Charley and Tom McCamus as Willy Loman. © 2026 Davod Hou.

For tickets visit: www.stratfordfestival.ca