Death of a Salesman

Death of a Salesman
by Arthur Miller

The Grand Theatre | March 7 – 23, 2013

[Fossen’s] deft approach certainly attracted the attention of his audience […] I suspect this was a better showing of Miller’s seminal play than the recent Broadway revival.

Susan C. W. Abbotson, The Arthur Miller Journal

With director Mark Fossen at the reigns, the Grand’s Death of a Salesman was executed with depth and professionalism, from the acting to the behind-the-scenes technical elements.

Utah Theatre Bloggers

Fossen’s direction manages pace and emotion with admirable ease.

The Salt Lake Tribune

The story revolves around the last days of Willy Loman, a failing salesman, who cannot understand how he failed to win success and happiness. Through a series of tragic soul-searching revelations of the life he has lived with his wife, his sons, and his business associates, we discover how his quest for the “American Dream” kept him blind to the people who truly loved him. A thrilling work of deep and revealing beauty that remains one of the most profound classic dramas of the American theatre.

How does one even approach a theatrical Everest like Death of a Salesman? Arguably the Great American Drama, it is universally acclaimed and burned into our collective memories. Even without knowing the play, the figure of haunted, stooped Willie Loman standing with sample case in hand is a defining American image.

That original 1949 production of Death of a Salesman was a lightning rod, attended by controversy ignited by Miller himself in an essay published in The New York Times entitled “Tragedy and the Common Man”. In this essay, he argues that a modern man of the middle-class can be a tragic figure in the classical mold: “the common man is as apt a subject for tragedy in its highest sense as kings were.” The argument continues to this day: is Willie Loman a tragic hero in the classical mold? Is a salesman’s fall as tragic as the fall of a king?

However, what interests me in a modern Salesman is not an academic argument of its bona fides as Greek tragedy, but rather a quote from later in that essay: “The quality in such plays that does shake us, however, derives from the underlying fear of being displaced, the disaster inherent in being torn away from our chosen image of what and who we are in this world. Among us today this fear is as strong, and perhaps stronger, than it ever was. In fact, it is the common man who knows this fear best.”

Certainly the economic trials of the past few years have impacted our idea of “what and who we are in this world.” Both as a nation and as individuals, there is a sense that our once glimmering future is now threatened by the mistakes of our past. It’s tempting to live through memories of the golden days and focus on dreams of a brighter future, but how important is it to see clearly in the here and the now? How important is it to know who we are, not who we were or who we wished to be?