Death of a Salesman

America is an easy target nowadays. With films like Fahrenheit 9/11 and Supersize Me, it’s also big money. So it would be tempting, when producing Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, to put an emphasis on the play’s criticisms of American society.

It’s a temptation, however, that the Theatre Aquarius thankfully resisted. Instead, it went for a portrayal of the dark side of materialism to which all of us are prone.

Appearances are everything to Willy Loman, the salesman whose demise forms the subject of the play. He is a proud man with great ambitions for himself and his two sons. However, his life is not much more than an artificial construction of boasting and half-truths, and the story charts Willy’s increasing self-delusion and desperation as the construction crumbles around him.

Events alternate between Willy’s past, when he was a moderately successful salesman and his sons were popular and athletic, and the present day, when he is working for next to no money and his sons are failures who pity and despise their father. The cast did well to jump between the two, with the optimistic feel of Willy’s younger years hinting at the tragedy yet to unfold.

As each grandiose idea gets shot down by reality, Willy’s optimism looks more and more like denial. He is utterly exhausted, and Tom McBeath as Willy conveyed this brilliantly. When asking his boss for a desk job so he no longer has to travel, he admits that he’s “kinda tired”, with his eyes pleading for help and desperation screaming from every pore.

This sense of being squeezed grows when Willy talks of how his house is hemmed in by development, how nothing will grow in the garden and only a small patch of sky can be seen. McBeath’s repeated hysterical cry of “the woods are burning!” is another metaphor for the siege mentality.

In the second half of the play, the desperation was everywhere. It burst from the actors’ bodies, it revealed itself in their voices, it oozed from the stage, it dripped from the rafters. The audience felt as surrounded as the characters and frustrated at the tragedy caused by Willy’s pride.

Only a few things spoiled this illusion. Graham Abbey as Willy’s son Biff could have portrayed the emotional scenes more convincingly, and Shaun Austin-Olsen as Willy’s older brother Ben was a little wooden at times. On the whole, however, the cast was excellent, particularly Donna Belleville as Willy’s long-suffering wife Linda who failed in the end to stop his demise.

The actors took their curtain call at the end of the play to subdued applause. However, this was not due to a lack of appreciation: rather, it showed the impact on the audience of a tale of pride and desperation compellingly told.