This isn’t a sponsored post.
BrumHour saw Death of a Salesman at the invite of Birmingham Rep.
By Dave Massey x.com/BrumHour
This production contains themes of violence within family and discussion of suicide.
Death of a Salesman at Birmingham Rep: Review
⭐⭐⭐⭐”A stunning snapshot of American history”
Directed by Andy Arnold, written by Arthur Miller
Willy Loman has spent most of his life on the road, mainly selling products to his clients on the east cost of the USA. Now that he is older and his sons are now men, he expects them to do better than he did with life. But his mental health and personal anger are consuming him.
Elements of Dementia, mental health breakdown and loss of personal value are the largest themes at play here, and the echos of this must resonate with enough people to have made this such an enduring story that gets retold for each generation.
David Hayman is excellent as Willy Loman, proud, hardworking and vulnerable. The audience is drawn to everything he says. Beth Marshall plays his long-suffering wife Linda, a strong woman with her family at the heart of her life. Dan Cahill and Michael Wallace play sons Biff (the failed prodigal) and Happy (the dependable son) but their characters are both flawed as each other. The anger of Dan Cahill’s character is felt tangibly through the theatre, whilst Michael Wallace’s Happy is a player with other co-workers wives or partners.
The static set is slatted wood panels for walls and two windows, there are seats for the actors at each side, and for the majority of the performance, all of the actors and musicians are on the stage at the side, almost witnessing every event from a short distance.
The broad strokes of the story, and the almost poetic dialogue, make the two hours and fifty-five minutes of this production pass briskly (thankfully there’s a twenty-minute interval to punctuate proceedings). Someone could have afforded to take at least ten pages out of this story a long time ago, but when presenting something so iconic these days it is probably difficult to know where.
A stunning snapshot of American history, Death of A Salesman is at Birmingham Rep until 15th March. Book tickets here: birmingham-rep.co.uk/whats-on/the-death-of-a-salesman.
