Arts
The ugly spectacle of failure
Peter Jenkins
Death of a Salesman (Lyttleton) In a recent interview Arthur Miller likened the theatre to 'a sort of spiritual newspaper'. I think that what he meant was that in the way that a newspaper has to keep up with the news a play needs to achieve topicality in terms of the spirit of thelimes. Few plays last, they are disposable works of art; Death of a Salesman has lasted triumphantly and the reason, I think, is that it went so near to the heart of its age that it came close to achieving universality. You could call that quality transcendental topicality.
Miller's play, his best, was first performed 30 years ago. America was booming and the American way-of-life was at its most aggressive; failure had become a fate worse than death and that is the tragedy of Willy Loman. The play can be seen at one level as a comment on the ultra-materialism of the age but more importantly it is the story of a man's destruction through the tearing-away of his protective covering of lies and selfdeceits. Willy is crucified, nailed to the truth of his own failure.
For me this superbly acted and directed revival at the National confirms Death of a Salesman as one of the greatest plays in the English language since the war — indeed' I can't think of a greater one — and puts Miller in contention with O'Neill as the greatest of American playwrights. It is a play of immense theatricality. The audience knows from the title, even if seeing it for the first time, that it is to witness the destruction of the chief character. Yet the plot is wonder fully intricate, and full of surprises, as it darts backwards and forwards from present to past, the flashbacks merging with the contemporary action. By this means the past as well as the present is made to foreclose on Willy Loman as Miller, relentless as a torturer, compounds his agonies; the spectacle is appalling and yet fascinating.
We are not required to like Willy — although he sets great store by being not only liked but 'well-liked' — nor do we need to feel much sympathy for him; pity is the appropriate emotion. Warren Mitchell plays him as the little man that he is sup posed to be, ludicrously vainglorious, expansive in manner but mean at heart. Miller does not suppose that failure in a man is a pretty sight and Mitchell's performance is masterly for its unsentimentality. Willie Loman is not a case of how nice guys always lose: the point is that America and its ruthless success ethic have produced in him a not very nice guy whom the secret of success has eluded. Mitchell has you identifying with Willy as with a cornered rat. As he looks back on his failure Willy asks himself and others 'what is the secret?' He gives muddled and conflicting advice to his two hopeless sons, Biff and Happy. Biff, a football hero turned thief and bum, represents another broken facet of the American dream — a yearning for the land and adolescence of the old west —while Happy is happy enough to screw around town and fall behind in the corporate rat race. The two of them are played with hard and beautiful accuracy by Stephen Greif and David Baxt and one feels, simultaneously, pity for the man with such sons and pity for them for having so much of their father in them. The relentless civil war which we see going on in the Loman family is also the war within Willy.
The acting was so good in this production, so authentically American and marvellously restrained, that it is difficult to single out performance but the charming and gentle Harry Towb has to be mentioned as Charley, the neighbour and family friend, who is the foil of decent success to Willy's misguided desperation. Perhaps the secret of success is success. The character of Charley provides an important point of reference in the play and prevents it from being misinterpreted as a mere polernic against commerce and the petit bourgeois life of Brooklyn. The cruellest line of all is when Willy wonders why Charley's son, Bernard, had neglected to mention that he was off to Washington to plead before the supreme court. Charley says 'He don't have to. He's going to do it,' The play is full of hard, memorable lines and some beautiful ones too. The landscape of New York City is depicted in the single sentence 'You have to break your neck if you want to see a star in this yard.' The designer, John Gunter, tries to contrast the prison of family life with the dreams of the prairies — or even the little place where Willy can grow his vegetables — by backprojecting open country against the avenue of fire escapes in which the dingy Loman home is set. I thought the set a little too constricting but the play is so powerful and mobile that it escapes all such bounds.
Direction is by Michael Rudman. With Miller living and writing and, indeed, in London during rehearsals, he was bound to stage it entirely in its original version. I suspect that if it survives to become the classic it should be it will be more often played without the final graveside scene — dramatically superfluous and no more than an epitaph in which a cloying sentimentality creeps in, The high emotional theatricality of Death of a Salesman often takes it to the brink of sentimentality. The glory of this production is that it unleashes all of that theatricality while avoiding the sentimental pitfall. By this means it loyally exposes the greatness of the play.
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