All-Black cast energizes 'Death of a Salesman'

 

     I was unprepared for the emotional impact director Miranda Cromwell’s revival of Death of a Salesman would have on me.  I haven't felt so moved since the first time I saw this Arthur Miller classic when I was 17 and went into it cold.

     Willy's death shook me deeply then and it did again yesterday thanks to Wendell Pierce’s powerful, fully human performance.  But I grieved for another character as well this time, Linda, Willy's devoted wife.  As portrayed by Sharon D. Clarke this Linda is a woman of our time, a feminist Linda who isn’t diminished by Willy's temper and insults.  

     Linda has always come off to me as a servile, 1950s TV wife with a “Yes, dear” attitude who cowered under Willy's verbal abuse.  When Willy yells at Clarke’s Linda to be quiet she stops talking but her gestures and expressions say plenty.  She’s no doormat.  She’s Willy’s equal and when she tells her sons she loves him I had no doubt.  In the past I’ve thought she was just kidding herself.

     This revival, at the Hudson Theatre, is the first time the 1949 play has been done on Broadway with an all-Black cast.  Broadway lags way behind Baltimore’s Center Stage in that regard.  The 1972 production I saw was the first time Salesman had been done by an all-Black professional cast in this country.  Miller came to the opening.  In a program note he wrote: “I have felt for many years that particularly with this play, which has been so well received in so many countries and cultures, that the black actor would have an opportunity, if that is needed anymore, to demonstrate all his common humanity and his talent.”  Obviously it was still needed because it took 50 years for it to happen on Broadway. 

     I’ve seen the play at least three other times — in 1983 at Syracuse Stage and the Broadway revivals in 1999 and 2012, with all white casts, of course, and I’ve read it I don’t know how many times through my three degrees in English.  Because of that I was reluctant to see it again.  I thought its power to move me was long gone and I went only as a dutiful Drama Desk voter.  I’m glad I did.  By the end, the graveside scene was so painful I was in tears.  Linda said she couldn’t cry but couldn’t not.  

     Adding to the emotion of the scene was a gospel recording that began to play quietly and was picked up by Linda singing “When We Meet Again When the Trumpets Sound.”  What a gut punch.  

     This gave a familiar classic a new take.  Clarke’s performance and Cromwell’s direction made the play a story of a husband and wife, a marriage, instead of the father/son story I had always been left with.

     Which leads me to the sons, Biff (Khris Davis) and Happy (McKinley Belcher III).  I’ve never had much sympathy for either of them except when I saw Kevin Anderson’s portrayal in the 1999 Broadway revival.  I did care about his Biff.  With these two I wanted to bash their heads together. 

     Andre De Shields portrays Ben, Willy’s older brother, who proudly tells Willy,  “William, when I walked into the jungle, I was 17.  When I walked out I was 21.  And, by God, I was rich!”  He is authoritative, almost kingly, pumped up with his own self-importance, making it easy to understand how he makes Willy feel he can’t measure up.  He’s also a bit scary when he’s the ghost of himself who plays out in Willy’s troubled mind.

     Scenic designer Anna Fleischle leaves the stage largely bare, which is effective in focusing on the drama of the play.  Furniture and window frames that are suspended from the ceiling go up and down as needed. Jen Schriever’s lighting design is dark and shadowy, in keeping with the mood.  

     This production was originally directed by Marianne Elliott and Miranda Cromwell at the Young Vic Theatre in London, and subsequently at the Piccadilly Theatre in London in 2019.    This Broadway production proves that attention must still be paid to Willy Loman and Miller’s enduring play.