Belvoir's Death of a Salesman

A total rave for this brilliant performance

DEATH OF A SALESMAN

BY ARTHUR MILLER

BELVOIR, JULY 2012

Thunderous applause screams of ‘Bravo!’, and a standing ovation for this shattering, powerful performance at Belvoir. Although written over sixty years ago, this play is as fresh as if it was written last week.  

This is a much anticipated performance with Colin Friels in the landmark role of Willy Loman, and he gives an incredible, volcanic performance. While set in America, the show is played with the cast’s natural Australian accents, another point that helps the audience totally relate to the play. Stone’s production is slightly abridged with a white mid 1990’s Ford Falcon in a black void as the only set. The various characters lounge around or sit on it, roll on it, emerge from it, sit in it in despair or anxiously waiting. Stone’s direction and staging is sometimes quite cinematic in effect, for example, the extended opening scene between Linda and Willy, where it is performed in dark close up in the front of the car.

Colin Friels as Willy Loman is in magnificent form. Is Willy sliding into mental illness/senility? Wild eyed, in some ways childlike, and regressing to memories of ‘the good old days’, sometimes raving and spitting, Willy has an obsessive mantra about how he never really did amount to much, despite all the gift of the gab that crucially now seems to have deserted him. At sixty, Willy Loman is tired. A typical Aussie battler, he is a travelling salesman (of what specifically we aren’t told) he is exhausted and drained and beginning to make dangerous mistakes. He is also sick of being ignored and wants someone to listen to him. He is one of the struggling aging workers , finding it difficult to make mortage and other payments, yet, is, as his wife Linda says, someone to whom ‘attention must be paid’. He is in some ways an Everyman, representing the downside and human face of the failed American/Australian Dream.

There are also the explosive family relationships, particularly between Willy and his sons Biff (Patrick Brammall) and Happy (Hamish Michael). Biff is always trying to do the right thing and please his parents but can’t. As played by Bramall, Biff is tousled, lion-maned, and a bit grungy, the somewhat unimpressive exterior hiding deep hurt. At 34 he is still trying to ‘find himself ‘, lying, stealing, and quitting jobs early – rather a drifter. It is an extraordinary, magnificent performance.  Terribly handsome Michael as Happy is a smarmy, wheedling would-be Lothario who usually tells Willy only what he wants to hear.

Willy is now haunted by his ‘glorious’ past and his much missed , almost mythologized dead brother Ben (Steve Le Marquand). Biff and Happy are driven to exasperation by Willy and no longer have respect for him especially after Biff has uncovered Willy’s carefully kept secret. Now, at the start of the play, evidence is uncovered that Willy is considering suicide.

Genevieve Lemon is brilliant as Linda, trying to cope with her husband, and shows how she is one of those who endure and hold the family together, a ‘phlegmatic, salt of the earth wife’ who still has a deep love for Willy. However, in this production, she is hampered by the abridgements and the slight change to the ending, particularly with the cutting of the Requiem scene.

Pip Miller as Charley and Stanley is great. Dishy, handsome Luke Mullins (who plays Howard, who Willy held in his arms as a baby and named) is horribly and despicably believable as the young man who ruthlessly fires Willy after thirty years with the firm. Mullins also plays the Loman’s neighbour Bernard, who is teased by the Loman’s, yet, they simultaneously greatly envy what he has achieved: Great Success.

Snazzy, sassy Blazey Best is excellent as The Woman who laughingly, drunkenly reveals Willy’s secrets to a younger Biff (played in flashback). The fact that he lavishes silk stockings on her while his wife Linda is at home darning hers increases Willy’s shame and rage.  And, yes, I agree with my colleagues about her strange, spectacular entrance from the boot of the car.

Directed by Simon Stone with a glorious ensemble led by Friels, this is an overwhelming performance not to be missed.

4 & 1/2 stars

Running time: 2 hours, 45 min. (approx.), including interval

Death of a Salesman

By Arthur Miller

Belvoir St, 27 June- 12, August 2012

Director – Simon Stone

Set Designer – Ralph Myers

Lighting Designer – Nick Schlieper

Costume Designer – Alice Babidge

Composer and Sound Designer – Stefan Gregory

Assistant Director Jennifer Medway

CAST

The Woman/Jenny/Miss Forsythe – Blazey Best

Biff – Patrick Brammall

Willy Loman – Colin Friels

Ben – Steve Le Marquand

Linda/Letta – Genevieve Lemon

Happy – Hamish Michael 

Charley/Stanley – Pip Miller

Bernard/Howard – Luke Mullins