The slightly crumpled brown suit, the stooped shoulders and the silhouette of an older man dragging heavy cases can mean only one thing: the Pulitzer Prize-winning Death of a Salesman has come to town. The verdant, rolling hills and forests surrounding Spring Green, Wis., greet Willy Loman, one of the most famous characters in American theater. He appears onstage in an outdoor amphitheater known as “the Hill.” This is the term is commonly used to describe the American Players Theater’s 1140-seat stage. Strong legs are required to surmount the steep climb to the theater’s edge. In its 37-year history, this is the first time American Players Theater has staged this American classic. In a number of ways, this production offers many pleasant surprises in what is often called one of the best American dramas of the 20th century. For instance, noted director Kenneth Albers has set the entire production within the walls of the Loman household. APT’s traditionally minimalist sets allow actors ample room to stroll through the wide stage area. When another location is called for, a simple bed or an office desk is temporarily added. The production is set in 1949 Brooklyn (when the play was first written). Almost all of the period props are painted in muted shades of green, as if to match the green canopy of trees towering above the set. A kitchen is represented by a circa 1940s refrigerator, a stove, a coffee pot, and a set of tables and chairs. The other rooms are even less furnished, as if the director wanted the audience’s attention firmly on the characters and the author’s words. He needn’t have worried. The uniformly excellent cast includes a few well-known APT veterans, some of whom live in Milwaukee and come to Spring Green for the summer. That’s the case with lead player Brian Mani. A tall man with the physique of an aging football player, Mani is ideally cast as Willy, a character without a future. Willy has spent his entire working life peddling shoes for the same company. In his prime, he opened new territories throughout New England. Now he is 63, and tired. Mani’s face reflects Willy’s weariness, especially in the opening scene. However, he’s more than tired – he’s scared. His mind is beginning to drift, to the point where he worries about his long weekly drives. He has had a few minor car accidents, which have shaken him. And since selling is the only thing he has ever known, he cannot conceive of a future without it. Willy also spends more and more time talking to himself aloud in public, which embarrasses his adult sons, Bif (Marcus Truschinski) and the ironically named Happy (Casey Hoekstra). There is nothing happy about Loman family. They have spent their lives longing for the unattainable American dream. The family’s rock-steady mother, Linda, is played by a thin, anemic-looking Tracy Michelle Arnold. Linda’s love for Willy is so great that she has quietly sacrificed a great deal over the years. (At one point she is miffed that the boys hadn’t noticed that she no longer goes to the beauty shop to hide her gray hair.) She turns out meager suppers and seems pleased when Willy notices the coffee she makes him each morning. In every movement and piece of dialogue, Arnold demonstrates that Linda is not fooled by Willy’s bluster. He may not be perfect, but at least he is hers. The exchanges between Willy and Linda yield many clues about his motivation to succeed and his devotion to his family. Willy is a paradox; he praises Linda one moment then cheats on her the next. Mani humanizes Willy to the point where he becomes more of a sympathetic character than this reviewer has seen in other productions. With each of Willy’s many missteps, the audience here is more likely to feel Willy’s pain than to condemn Willy’s actions. Biff, the oldest son, enters the play as lost as Willy. Now in his early 30s, Biff has come home after losing yet another job. Willy is hard on him, and this baffles the rest of the family. Biff was once the apple of his father’s eye. Now Willy won’t let Biff forget that he has failed to live up to his family’s expectations. In one of the production’s most startling “flashback” scenes, a teenage Biff unexpectedly catches Willy with another woman during one of his nights on the road. The young man is shocked, angered and frightened by the situation he finds himself in. Meanwhile, Willy can’t accept the truth; he has failed Biff and must accept responsibility for the consequences.
As artfully performed by Mani and Sarah Daly as The Woman, it’s clear that their relationship is one of convenience only. It is loneliness, not love, that binds them. They are both are well aware of the deal they have struck: a few laughs, and some sex in exchange for silk stockings. When Biff enters Willy’s hotel room, he can’t comprehend all this at his young age. Nonetheless, an unimaginable amount of emotional damage has been done.
When the play returns to the present, Willy faces more bad news. He is callously dismissed by a son who now runs the company his father founded. Willy takes the news very hard, and Linda worries about her husband’s will to live. She has found evidence in the basement that bothers her. Yet, she tries to cheer Willy by saying that mortgage is almost paid up, and there are only a few payments left on the refrigerator (in those days, refrigerators and washing machines were expensive enough to require many people to take out lengthy payment plans to afford them). One of the play’s best scenes is when Willy tries to stir up a final confrontation with Biff. But this time, Biff calls Willy’s bluff. As Biff, Truschinski makes the most of this critical moment. He tells Willy he finally realizes he could no longer be – and perhaps never was – the hero that Willy demanded. Willy, not surprisingly, first tries to bamboozle Biff. But when Biff falls to his knees and almost sobs in his father’s arms, Willy is stunned into silence. He feels, perhaps for the first time, that he needn’t hide his own inadequacies to earn his son’s respect. The final scene takes place at Willy’s gravesite. Linda moves a few paces into one of the aisles, where Willy is “buried.” Willy’s sons and best friend Charley (Johnny Lee Davenport) respectfully linger behind onstage. The audience envisions how lonely Linda will be without her husband. Speaking to the grave, she says she can’t understand why Willie would end his life just as all their debts are starting to disappear. “We were FREE,” she says, not realizing that Willy has chosen his own path to freedom in a way that could finally end his pain.
