DEATH OF A SALESMAN  at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre

(Seen March 22, 2012)


Few people will argue against calling this Arthur Miller play an American masterpiece.  In the 60-plus years since audiences first encountered Miller's story of a family's failed dreams, crushed by human frailty and circumstance, there have been many re-interpretations of this poignant drama.  (For me, none have reached the depth of Lee J. Cobb and Mildred Dunnock.)

The play out-matches so many superlative Greek and Russian tragedies in both its simplicity and intensity.  So that by imbuing the characters of Willy and Biff Loman with such devastating and anguished inner life, both Philip Seymour Hoffman and Andrew Garfield take away much of the reality and the pathos that already exists in the writing.  They display their pain and their disappointment as though it was a badge of honor.  Their intensity never flags, and we lose sight of their humanity.

And director Mike Nichols has allowed them to revel in this depressive state, so that they become symbols rather than real people caught up in a tragic situation.