Reverence Must Be Paid; Palm Beach Dramaworks Stages ‘Death of a Salesman’

 

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 75^th 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.

 

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. 

 

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.  

 

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.

 

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 25^th 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.

 

Sondheim Surprised us in Delray

 

When the Delray Beach Playhouse, tucked away on Lake Ida, announced it was producing Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along we were somewhat shocked that they could secure the rights.  After all, a new version starring Daniel Radcliffe, among other luminaries was opening on Broadway.  This is a Sondheim play we had never seen, and as it was impractical getting to New York, we immediately booked our front row seats.  The Broadway show which received rave reviews was extended, and consequently the Delray rights were shortened to only 12 performances.  Luckily, yesterday we saw their production.

 

It is truly remarkable that this complicated musical could be so skillfully handled at the community theater level, but Delray Beach Playhouse is entering its 77^th year and there is a reason for that as this production clearly showed.  

 

The leads, Bob Ruggles as Frank Shepard (the composer), Chris Ombres as Charley Kingras (the lyricist) and Devra Seidel (as Mary Flynn, the writer  – a character Sondheim modeled after his lifelong friend and love, Mary Rodgers, the daughter of Richard Rodgers), rose to the occasion, professional in every way.  (Ms. Seidel unfortunately did have a mishap falling down a few steps in a very restricted ball gown, but bounded up at once and though we were convinced she was injured, bravely carried on in the “show must go on” style.)  There were also a few players in the ensemble cast who helped to carry the show, with the remaining more inexperienced performers showing their amateur status but overall the production, under the direction of Andre Lancaster was, for us, a hit in every way, perfectly filling out our Sondheim lacuna.

 

The show was based on Kaufman and Hart's 1934 Broadway play of the same title and this is where the complexity begins, as that play travels backwards in time.  Sondheim was a well known constructor of puzzles and mysteries for his friends.  He was approaching his peak artistic years when he wrote Merrily.  It must have been an incredible rush for him to look at his career then, and to give us clues from his own personal journey from a wide eyed young composer / lyricist of his first show, Saturday Night (rarely performed unfortunately, and not even opening in the 1950s when its producer died) to the point of becoming one of Broadway’s most acknowledged and brilliant composer/lyricists (and on his way to even greater fame after this midpoint show was initially a flop).

 

I thought it interesting that Sondheim dealt with his two incredible gifts as a composer and lyricist in two different characters, Frank and Charley, the former being urged to fame and the latter dedicated to his art.  It is the same conflict that confronted Sondheim, under constant criticism for not writing “memorable” songs (although I defy many to write these three that I love in this show, “Not a Day Goes By,” “Old Friends” and “Good Thing Going”)  - and heck, I could add the bittersweet songs "Opening Doors” and "Our Time" which conclude the show.  Amusingly he deals with that very issue in Merrily.  It is a soul satisfying show, sad in many ways though -- as when it comes down to it, life is a game of Pick-Up-Sticks, the accident of where you are born, when, and to whom, and what you do with the talent and opportunities you have.  Sondheim of course was a genius, and he used his gifts so well.

 

It had a very brief run in its original production on Broadway in the early 1980’s.  Sondheim explains its initial commercial failure best in his Finishing the Hat: What we [Hal Prince and he] envisioned was a cautionary tale in which actors in their late teens and early 20s would begin disguised as middle-aged sophisticates, and gradually become their innocent young souls as the evening progressed. Unfortunately, we got caught in a paradox we should have foreseen: actors that young, no matter how talented rarely have the experience or skills to play anything but themselves, and in this case, even that caused them difficulties….The last twenty minutes of the show when the cast reverted to their true ages was undeniably touching, but the rest of the evening had an amateur feeling – which, ironically, had been what we wanted. If the show had played in an off-Broadway house at off-Broadway prices, it would have stood a better chance of fulfilling our intent; as it was, at Broadway’s Alvin theater, and at Broadway prices, it turned the audiences off.”

 

So it was with some irony that we saw a version which might have satisfied the great master in many ways, an amateurish feeling, off-off-off Broadway production.  But all the elements of a deeply satisfying theater experience were there for us, more so than so many of the “professional” musical revivals Florida theaters are famous for; it’s a Sondheim piece, rarely performed, by a dedicated theater group, and even with a multi-piece live orchestra under the direction of Aidan Quintana, that sounded like a full Broadway orchestra (too little attribution was given to the musicians in the program and even after the show, although Ann saw one exiting as we drove out and rolled down the window to thank him and his group).  The scenic design, costumes, and the staging were professional as well.

 

Bravura to all the performers, and to the Delray Beach Playhouse.

 

For Sondheim core devotees, such as us, the Director Richard Linklater is shooting a very ambitious film version of Merrily We Roll Along.  It stars Paul Mescal (as Frank), Beanie Feldstein (as Mary) and Ben Platt (as Charley).  It’s ambitious as it’s being filmed over a twenty year period so the actors can naturally age, and through the magic of movie cutting, we will have one for the screen in the early   2040s as Ann and I approach 100.  We can’t wait although by then we might be on one of the early flights to Mars.   

‘From now on, all my friends are gonna be strangers’

 

Many of mine are already strangers, be it due to modern-day nomadism, rising political contrariety, or the inexorable consequences of time.

 

Larry McMurtry wrote All My Friends Are Going to be Strangers (1972) when he was about 35, only a few years older than I was at the time. I haven’t read much Western Literature, although I’ve enjoyed the works of writers such as Wallace Stegner, Phillip Meyer, Jim Harrison, Thomas McGuane, who have set some of their stories there.  But when one thinks of old west fiction, writers such as Louis L'Amour, Larry McMurtry, and Zane Grey spring to mind.  Being a northeast kind of guy, my taste in literature does not go there.  My loss I suppose, but the alternative use of time justifies (in my mind) an excusable indifference.

 

Nonetheless when somewhere or someone – don’t remember who or where – recommended this McMurtry novel as a work to get to know him as a writer, not necessarily as a western writer, I put it on my list and when it arrived thought it would be the perfect book to take on our recent cruise.

 

I fondly remember Peter Bogdanovich’s The Last Picture Show for which McMurtry wrote the screenplay based on his novel, it being filmed in his old home town. Between that and the title of the book itself, probably based on Merle Haggard’s - "(My Friends Are Gonna Be) Strangers” I was prepared to enjoy this book. After all, friends, old lovers, peel away as one ages, and at a certain point one is flying solo. 

 

All My Friends Are Going to be Strangers displays McMurtry’s gift of dialogue and self-deprecation (or at least resignation to circumstance), comically capturing what makes people uniquely weird and wonderful, full of fathomless eccentricities.  All of this is seen through the eyes of Danny Deck, a writer in his early twenties whose peripatetic life makes up a solid Bildungsroman of a young writer’s journey and how life gets in the way of art.  I jealously admired Danny’s ability to take advantage of youth without caring about consequences. It is about the ride, not the destination. 

 

Danny goes through a marriage, other women, friends, enemies, beatings but along the way has his first novel published (although he doesn’t think much of it), and he gets enough money for a film based on it to live on.  He’s flown to Hollywood to write the screenplay (naturally, he doesn’t have the foggiest idea of what to do, how to do it, carried along by fate).  He seems to be on a ramp to oblivion and we leave him with his second novel in manuscript form, drowning it (and maybe himself?) in the Rio Grande River.  Perhaps, it’s just one of the many rivers in Jim Harrison’s The River Swimmer

 

His writing is reminiscent of Kurt Vonnegut’s ironic, dark sense of humor.  Here Danny meets Leon, the Hollywood producer of the film to be made based on his novel in the backseat of Leon’s Bentley with Juney, Leon’s assistant/companion/enabler:

 

“Danny, I want you to know I think your novel’s great.” Leon said when we were shaking hands. He avoided my eye when he said it, and I avoided his. We almost looked at each other accidentally while we were avoiding each other’s eyes. I felt very embarrassed. I hadn’t gotten used to the fact that strangers out in the world had read my novel.

 

“I’m out here wasting my education,” Leon said a little later as we were purring out the Hollywood Freeway in the Bentley.

 

“I was brought up to believe that a gentleman does as little as possible with his education,” he said. “I think I’ve achieved pretty near the minimum. No one could expect me to do less than I’ve done.”

 

Juney looked at him tenderly and patted his hand. She was a motherly blonde. “Tough it out baby,” she said. Leon did not respond.

 

“Leon went to Harvard,” she said turning to me. “He operates from a very high level of taste. He really hates ostentation and affectation, but let’s face it in this industry you can’t escape it. You have to be ostentatious, you have to have affectations.  Leon actually has to affect affectations. It’s a sad thing. This Bentley is one of the affectations he’s affecting.  He doesn’t really want to drive a Bentley.”

 

Another of Leon’s affections is his pet twenty-two pound rat which he one bought for a science fiction movie he produced when it weighed five pounds less.

 

So I second the motion.  To get to know Larry McMurtry, the writer, this is the book.  You are sure to hear Merle Haggard singing…

 

From now on, all my friends are gonna be strangers

I'm all through ever trusting anyone

The only thing I can count on now is my fingers

I was a fool believing in you and now you are gone