As the cast was taking their well deserved curtain call, tears were flowing from the eyes of the young actor who plays Happy, Ty Fanning, as visibly shaken as many in the audience. Were they tears of joy being in such a landmark production or was he still in his character as the play ends with Willy’s sparsely attended funeral? If a great tragedy requires the playwright, the cast, and the audience to climb an emotional mountain together, this production of Arthur Miller’s Death of the Salesman by Palm Beach Dramaworks reaches its summit.
Celebrating its 75th anniversary since opening on Broadway it is arguably one of the preeminent American plays. The universality of its themes, although focused on the American Dream, has resonated around the world in many productions and languages.
This new interpretation makes seeing it again especially rewarding. As a realistic drama, PBD’s version is stripped down to the fundamentals of the human experience. Director J. Barry Lewis, while adhering closely to Miller’s textual suggestions, relies on the absence of realistic scenic design to enhance this performance’s artistic achievements. His pacing of the play is electric. The use of space and lighting, with ideal casting and extraordinary acting, with a few period props and costumes to define the realism of the 1940s, make this a fresh portrayal and another gem in PBD’s history.
The staging has a feeling of a Greek tragedy or a liturgical piece, where self deception and the worship of unrealized dreams of wealth and success are the essential tragic elements. Miller mixes the stark realism with dream events such as Willy’s dead brother Ben appearing to incite him to make his fortune. These themes were particularly potent to a depression generation when it was first performed, but the genius of this play is its endurance through time, past, present, and undoubtedly into the future. Willy’s sons suffer the multi-generational curse of the American Dream’s tantalizing but deceitful promise. We are left with it in a nation dedicated to amassing personal fortunes with little concern for the greater good. Miller portrays the underbelly of capitalism in the play making it as relevant today as then.
The emotional interaction of the dysfunctional Loman family is at the core of the play and the orbiting characters provide fuel for this explosive production.
Rob Donohoe as Willy Loman skillfully navigates the fine line between reality and delusion. Donohoe turns elation into despair and then back again with remarkable ease. His emotional journey increasingly commingles the present with reveries of the past as he steadfastly adheres to the belief that “being well liked” is the path to success for himself and his sons. Donohoe’s fluid interaction with the other characters is breathtaking. His pitiable attempt to plant a garden during his emotional journey is tragic. One of the most challenging of all stage roles, Donohoe takes it on with immense energy and artistic insight.
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| Rob Donohoe, Helena Ruoti, Photo by Tim Stepien |
His wife, Linda, is played by Helena Ruoti (PBD debut) with an equally outstanding performance, emphasizing her character’s deep love for her husband. She knows Willy is on the edge of collapse and does everything possible to protect and prop him up, creating excuses for his shortcomings, exhaustion, justifying his faith in the Dream. Ruoti’s portrayal at the play’s cathartic conclusion is searing.
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| Michael Shenefelt, Helena Ruoti, Photo by Tim Stepien |
Willy’s two sons are the older, Biff, heartbreakingly played by Michael Shenefelt (PBD debut), and the younger, Happy, performed by Ty Fanning (PBD debut). They both give first-rate performances, as their teen selves and later as lost adults. Biff has returned home hoping to find himself after years away in a number of menial jobs and even spending some brief time in prison. Shenefelt’s role has the more challenging arc to it and he rises to the occasion, expressing his character’s dismay and, ultimately, anger as old family dynamics quickly reemerge. He is entrapped once again until his climatic confrontation with his father.
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| Ty Fanning, Rob Donohoe, Michael Shenefelt, Photo by Tim Stepien |
It is easier to sympathize with him than his brother who has the ironic nickname of “Happy.” Ty Fanning plays him as manipulative and self deceiving, thinking of himself as a Lothario, and clearly destined to live a life like his father. Yet he does everything feasible to keep the peace in the family by reinforcing Willy’s fantasies.
Another element of dream sequences is the leitmotif of the promise of great wealth represented by the appearance of Ben, Willy’s recently deceased brother, played by Tom Wahl with a taunting omniscience. First appearing in a ghostly fashion to Willy and later interacting with his sons in the prism of Willy’s imagination, he heightens Willy’s dreams of success and wealth. Ben had made his fortune in diamonds in Africa. At one point he challenges Biff to take a swing at him, Ben prevailing, and scornfully delivering the memorable lines, Never fight fair with a stranger, boy. You’ll never get out of the jungle that way. It is yet another reoccurring theme in the play: the imagined path to wealth is to circumvent the system.
One more dream sequence is of Willy and “The Woman” seductively played by Gracie Winchester. This is a shame based memory of Willy’s earlier years on the road, having an affair with The Woman in a Boston hotel. The scene with Winchester toying with Willy, flattering him saying he always makes her laugh, is painfully juxtaposed to present day Linda, partially in the shadows. Ultimately this liaison is pivotal to the plot as Biff surprises his father by visiting him on the road to urge him to help him graduate, discovering this duplicity. This part of Willy’s recollection is conveniently dissociated from Biff’s later failure.
Willy’s longing for the promise of the past also brings in his longtime neighbor, Charley, staunchly played by PBD’s Producing Artistic Director, William Hayes, who is an actor at heart and is indeed an excellent one. Charley is a businessman and Hayes plays him as all business. Yet he is also an old friend, a foil to Willy, working the system well to achieve success and contentment. He is indeed Willy’s only friend, something Willy sadly acknowledges.
In more dream sequences of earlier years Willy interacts with Charley, and his nerdy son Bernard, as lacking the stuff to attain the Dream, but in the present it is Charley who advances money to Willy on a steady basis, even trying to hire him, an eleemosynary gesture at Willy’s nadir, and Bernard who becomes the true success as a lawyer. Bernard is masterfully played by Harrison Bryan who idolizes Biff when in high school, and is respectful of “Uncle” Willy as an adult. Charley and Bernard are the symbols of the success that elude Willy and his sons, playing the game by the rules.
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| Rob Donohoe, Michael Shenefelt, Ty Fanning Photo by Tim Stepien |
The play’s denouement is the traumatic restaurant scene in which Willy, Happy, and Biff appear along with the waiter, Stanley, sensitively played by John Campagnuolo, who expresses more sympathy towards Willy than Happy. There are also the two young floozies Happy has picked up, Nathalie Andrade as Letta (who also plays Jenny, Charley’s secretary) and Hannah Hayley (PBD debut) as Ms. Forsythe, each giddily caught up in the illusion of Happy and Biff being men of means. It is at this dinner that truths come out, including Willy having been fired from his job by the son of the his firm’s founder, Howard, impatiently rendered by Matthew W. Korinko as a person who is gleefully more interested in the new technology of a tape recorder than the decades of Willy’s service to the company.
Scenic design is by Anne Mundell, who adheres to Sondheim’s adage that less is more, creating a simple multilevel set for this potent drama to unfold.
Video design is by Adam J. Thompson, PBD’s newly appointed resident projection designer who gets the audience’s attention immediately with a creative opening avatar of a salesman that dissolves into nothing. He contributes some abstract geometric designs for certain scenes, all in keeping with the production.
Costume design is by Brian O’Keefe who focuses on the two different time periods, appropriate costumes mostly in neutral pastels for the 40s, adding warmer colors for the 1930’s. Many of the scenes are of the brothers in nightclothes and especially Linda in her disheveled old nightgown and bathrobe. “The Woman” appears in a slip and stockings and Ben is nattily dressed with a vest but rumpled sport coat, carrying a folded umbrella, ready to leave on the first boat to fortune.
With the threadbare stage, lighting design by Kirk Bookman takes on an additional dimension to support what is going through Willy’s tortured mind, sometimes with a portion of the stage depicting the present and the other part, the past. Shadows are as important as lighting such as the opening when the sons are in shadows and Willy and Linda discussing the return of Biff. While the audience is being asked to create its own conception of setting, lighting supplies the focus.
Sound design is by Roger Arnold, with the requisite everyday sounds such as the barking dog here and there. More importantly the playwright specifically indicates the need for a background abstract piano or flute score particularly during those moments when Willy is in his idealized (or guilt ridden) dream world. Most productions use the original score by Alex North but seeking to accentuate its original production, PBD commissioned a new wistful score by Josh Lubben. Some of that music is used for transitional scenes. Arnold also implements an echo chamber effect for some of “The Woman’s” laughter that eerily overlaps with the laughter of the women who briefly appear at the dinner scene.
It is only fitting that as Palm Beach Dramaworks enters its 25th anniversary season, it has staged this great play. J. Barry Lewis, PBD’s Resident Director, has made his interpretation of Death of a Salesman his masterpiece in its conception and how it flows. This is why one should see this play, even again. It is unforgettable.
