{"id":3817,"date":"2026-09-29T20:11:25","date_gmt":"2026-09-29T10:41:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/?p=3817"},"modified":"2026-09-30T20:12:18","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T10:42:18","slug":"death-of-a-salesman-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/?p=3817","title":{"rendered":"Death of a Salesman"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

With a first-rate cast and brilliant staging, Neil Armfield\u2019s revival of Arthur Miller\u2019s American classic, Death of a Salesman<\/em> is as prescient and current in its implications as it was in 1949.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Written by Murray Bramwell<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a television interview for the BBC in 1987, marking the publication of his memoir Timebends<\/em>, the lanky, owlish Arthur Miller raised his arm and waggled his forefinger and moved it in front of him. \u201cMy plays\u201d, he mused aloud, \u201care about how all birds come home to roost. They fly around doing a thousand things and the branch is empty. But one by one they have to come back down and sit on it. And that\u2019s the play- the descent into the present of the past\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like Sophocles, Aeschylus and Euripides, the Greek dramatists he so admired, and the early Modernists- Zola, Ibsen, Chekhov and others – with their newly evolved notions of Naturalism and the twin forces and nature and nurture, Miller\u2019s plays are about the inevitability of consequences – and tragedy as destiny.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is a defining feature of them \u2013 All My Sons, A View from the Bridge, The Crucible<\/em>, and, most particularly, Death of a Salesman<\/em>. Written in six weeks in 1948 ( the director Elia Kazan observed that Miller \u201cdidn\u2019t write the play, he released<\/em> it. It was there inside him waiting to be let loose.\u201d) Salesman<\/em> premiered in Philadelphia a year later. It made him, as he noted, \u201cfamous all at once.\u201d Adding wryly, \u201cAfter fifteen years of work.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With his central character, Miller wanted to portray the tragic fall of an ordinary man. Calling his protagonist Loman (low man) seemed to underline this point but, in his excellent biography, American Witness<\/em>, John Lahr tells us that actually the name was taken from the terrified detective, Lohmann, in Fritz Lang\u2019s 1933 film The Testament of Doctor Mabuse.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although it was written in the late 1940s, the roots and branches of Death<\/em> of a Salesman<\/em> are in the Great Depression twenty years earlier. The trauma of the Crash had a range of consequences \u2013 despair and ruin, of course , but there was also a kind of paralysis, of denial, leading instead to exaggerated optimism and a delusion that the much vaunted American Dream was still coming true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like many of his generation and those before and since, Willy Loman has a perilous belief in self-belief and that his destiny is entirely self-made. He is caught in the notion that his worth is measured in dollars and his reputation by popularity. These are the cup bearers of luck . It is the secular version of the puritan Prosperity Theology so shamelessly revived and paraded today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Miller was asked by a play-goer – what is this salesman selling ? What are the samples in his heavy suitcases ? Miller\u2019s reply \u2013 \u201cHe is selling himself.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And Willie, summarily dismissed by his employer as useless and redundant, is now discovering there are no buyers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the 77 years of the play, Death of a Salesman<\/em> has intersected startlingly with the times \u2013 the American times, which we know all too well, are to a great extent, our times also. For a period, in the 1960s, optimism for a progressive future was high and Death of a Salesman<\/em> seemed dated and obsolete \u2013 certainly for me, writing undergraduate essays about it. How wrong that turned out to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because then came the financial hiccups which increased into conspicuously tubercular consumption \u2013 the 70s fuel crisis , the Greed is Good 80s, the 1989 Meltdown , the Dotcom Bubble, 2008 and Subprime , COVID 19. And now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where are we now ? In the Trump infested AI End Times ? Death of a<\/em> Salesman<\/em> speaks to us louder than ever, but in ever-new ways depending on the fortunes and fears of the moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Miller reminds us that these financial crises, which occur within the huge wheel of rising and falling commerce and capitalism, greatly affect real people. Workers who only want modest prosperity and shelter for their families, and recognition and security for their industrial fidelity. And employers, stressed and uncertain about their responsibilities for maintaining thriving profitable businesses .<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Except, of course, the play we see now is through the dark lens of oligarch mega-profit and reckless, ruinous de-regulation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In director Neil Armfield\u2019s outstanding new production (from GWB Entertainment and Andrew Henry) Death of a Salesman<\/em> has found new life. And is also admirably true to Miller\u2019s \u201cpoetic vision\u201d. He had initially intended to call the play The Inside of his Head<\/em> and toyed with the idea of using a proscenium in the shape of a human cranium. He also tellingly noted that \u201cIn a certain sense, Willy is all the voices.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Armfield and designer Dale Ferguson have dispensed with even the partial naturalism of Jo Mielziner\u2019s original concept. His \u201cskeletal house\u201d has now become an eleven-tiered bank of bleachers with a lookout room above, representing a 40s version of Brooklyn\u2019s Ebbets Field baseball and gridiron stadium.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is performance space in front with nondescript tables and chairs for domestic, office and restaurant scenes during which cast members not included are artfully placed in scattered seating on various levels of the bleachers. Splendidly, even sometimes sumptuously lit by Niklas Pajanti the effect is of a forum, or a jury \u2013 or even deities witnessing Willy Loman\u2019s gradual decline into the lower depths.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is also an inventive solution to the abrupt shifts of time and dimension that occur because of the phantasmagoric nature of Willy\u2019s dislocated consciousness. Dale Ferguson and Sophie Woodward use cleverly simple costume changes to differentiate past and present \u2013 Linda Loman\u2019s orange cardigan for instance, or retro sportswear for sons, Biff and Happy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The production is enveloped in mostly subliminal sound textures from David Greasley and David Tonion \u2013 that is, with the exception of the final auto cacophony late in Act Two. Mention is also due for long time Armfield collaborator, the composer Alan John, whose score for strings, flute, woodwinds and maybe, marimba (?) flutters just below the dialogue or, more strikingly, ushers in a change of scene.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The performances are uniformly excellent, making the ensemble experience theatrically compelling. As the looming shade of Willy Loman\u2019s older brother Uncle Ben, Anthony Phelan, in broad hat and long boots, delivers his rebukes in stentorian Yankee tones. One of the louder voices in Willy\u2019s head, he also reminds us that he \u201cwalked into the jungle at seventeen and when I walked out at 21, by God was I rich!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the women carelessly and dishonourably treated by the Lomans, senior and junior, Luca Sardelis plays Jenny and Letta, Elizabeth Blackmore plays Miss Forsyth, and Paula Arundell memorably navigates the role of Willy\u2019s on the road paramour, known only in the text as The Woman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Closer to home are the neighbours, Charley and his son Bernard. Marco Chiappi brings depth to the kindly, but bemused, Charley whose assistance Willy both needs and resents, discovering only belatedly he is his only true friend. James Smith, as Bernard, provides a lively comic nerdiness alongside the strutting sports jocks, Biff and Happy, but also brings emotional shading into the later scene with the rapidly unravelling Willy Loman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another leading Adelaide actor, Mark Saturno, delivers two excellent cameos \u2013 one as a waiter steering diplomatically around the chaotic bar scene when Willy and his sons are supposed to meet for some family sit-down reconciliation. Then as Howard Wagner, the son of Willy\u2019s original boss, giving his longtime employee the flick while blithely ignoring his impecunity, Saturno captures a very recognisable instance of privilege and employer bastardry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the key roles of the Loman siblings with the gee-whiz nicknames and easy excuses, Ben O\u2019Toole as Happy and Josh Helman as Biff, with Armfield\u2019s guidance, highlight the capture of two young men in postwar American adolescence . Goaded by their father to flaunt their sporting prowess and lucky good looks, they have become shallow and narcissistic, hooligans at school and abusive of women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

O\u2019Toole\u2019s Happy is lazy, sly, and go-lucky, using his salesman\u2019s charm to seduce gormless party girls, negligent and indifferent to his father\u2019s misery, and his mother\u2019s humiliation, he works constantly to keep Biff down at his easy level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Josh Helman as Biff has a deeper character path to discover and his crisis (and genuine self-discovery ) is a reminder of Miller\u2019s insightful writing. It is Biff who calls halt on the fantasy of wealth and celebrity and his final scene brings an important dimension to this production.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also key to the success of this reading of Salesman<\/em> is Alison Whyte as Linda, the put-upon wife and mother who is both victim of the failings of the Lomen, and their fiercest protector. Whyte\u2019s is a clear and vivid voice in the play, her accent is impeccable and she rises above the morass, only to find both her husband more mired in self-deception and dishonesty. Her \u201cattention must be paid\u201d is a famously quotable speech but it can also be sanctimonious and an easy emotional penance for the audience. Not so here. When Alison Whyte says it, no one is off the hook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then there is Anthony LaPaglia, whose grimly determined but heart-broken portrait in hat and cheap suit, has been potently successful in the online marketing of this production tour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his fedora with the brim slightly lifted, heavy padded jacket, his tie askew, and shirt collar bent, he arrives with heavy baggage in both hands and, as he dumps the cases on the stage, the unravelling begins. LaPaglia as Willy is forlorn, irascible, a bully to some, craven to others, lost in reveries of imagined golden times, a praiser of his own past, and valiant optimist for a change in the weather.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His performance is true to Miller\u2019s text. He is irritating, deluded, bewildered, and mulishly stubborn, but he is still a person of worth, Anthony LaPaglia allows him that and much more. He speaks for Willy Loman and shows us why. Arthur Miller couldn\u2019t ask more of his play than that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LaPaglia\u2019s delivery at times dims, and he seems sometimes short of breath, but this only brings conviction and pathos to the predicament he is in and the indifference around him. Only Biff understands he has backed the wrong horse. And Arthur Miller is reminding us that successive generations (including us) are trapped in a dream that is full of nightmare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Death of a Salesman<\/em> is a play which keeps tracking our times because its questions are perennial and increasingly timely. When Biff asks himself what is his life for, what is it that gives him purpose \u2013 and more importantly, realises that he is more than just a cog in a wheel, an industrial cipher – it is our question too. Willy it turns out, is in the gig economy, and so are we, or those very near us. Linda Loman said attention must be paid. This terrific production of Arthur Miller\u2019s masterpiece shows us where to look.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Death of a Salesman<\/em> plays at the Festival Theatre until October 4.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Published in InDaily InReview September 28. 2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.indailysa.com.au\/inreview\/theatre\/2026\/09\/28\/theatre-review-death-of-a-salesman<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With a first-rate cast and brilliant staging, Neil Armfield\u2019s revival of Arthur Miller\u2019s American classic, Death of a Salesman is as prescient and current in its implications as it was in 1949. Written by Murray Bramwell In a television interview for the BBC in 1987, marking the publication of his memoir Timebends, the lanky, owlish Arthur Miller raised his arm and waggled his forefinger and moved it in front of him. \u201cMy plays\u201d, he mused aloud, \u201care about how all […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,48,18,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive","category-48","category-interstate","category-theatre"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3817"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3817\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3818,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3817\/revisions\/3818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}