Brokenness Personified: Death of a Salesman at the Harbor Stage Company

When we left the theater after seeing Death of a Salesman, I turned to my companion and asked, “what did you think?” He thought for a moment and then said,  “It’s not for the faint of heart, but that’s the way epic tales of woe often are.”

I wouldn’t have described Salesman as an “epic tale of woe,” but the more I think about it, the more I think he was right. Playwright Arthur Miller takes grandiose themes and distills them, giving audiences characters they feel they may know in real life. But however disguised, they are still “epic tales of woe.”

The truth is, there’s not a lot that’s uplifting in Miller’s work—I once left the theater after seeing an excellent performance of The Crucible and promptly burst into tears—and founding member and director Bob Kropf, along with scenic designer Justin Lahue, drive the bleakness home from the very start, with a too-bright black-and-white set (no compromises here!) and nothing but a table on the stage.

Kropf’s direction is brilliant. He eliminated several of the characters usually present in the play to offer the audience a pared-down version that conveys the essentials without injecting any of the “extra” scenes and characters that might detract from following salesman Willy Loman’s (played with more bewilderment than angst by William Zielinski) disintegration.

The true problem is that Willy believes success is measured by wealth, popularity, and material possessions, a belief he has tried to instill in his sons, Biff (Alex Pollock) and Happy (Jack Ashenbach). As Willy’s sales career declines and his physical and mental health deteriorates, his grasp on reality begins to weaken. He experiences frequent flashbacks and hallucinations, particularly of his successful older brother Ben, which highlight his feelings of inadequacy and failure.

Willy’s sense of self is deeply tied to his career as a salesman. As he loses his job and his ability to sell, he experiences a profound loss of identity and purpose, leading to suicidal thoughts and eventually actions.

A standout performance by Stacy Fischer as Willy’s wife, Linda, balances Willy’s depression and angst. She is the one who’s kept the family alive and functioning, and for much of the play she’s a glass-half-full sort of presence. She freaks out, however, when thinking that Willy might commit suicide; and Fischer handles her transition from “we’ll get by” to a future darker than anything they’ve experienced until that moment with fantastic realism. She knows all Willy’s secrets (borrowing money from their neighbor Charley to pay life insurance and other bills), and, after discovering the rubber hose hidden behind the heater, lives in fear that Willy will try to asphyxiate himself.

Sons Biff and Happy accentuate and even compel Willy’s pain. The production’s decision to remove some scenes that help the audience understand Happy’s life and past has made his role here something of a ghost (unlike the very real ghost of Willy’s deceased older brother, projected on the wall), though it’s clear that he emulates his father in many ways, believing Willy’s theory that success comes from being well-liked.

In Biff, however, we encounter the price of following family expectations which run counter to one’s own ambitions (the successful son wants nothing more than to go live on a farm, clearly a problem for Willy who measures success via achievements).

As Willy, Zielinski leans heavily into his character’s difficulty in accepting reality, and so becomes a perfect encapsulation of the dangers inherent in capitalism. Willy wants to believe in a triumphant past as well as a respected present and future, and has never allowed himself the space to challenge those beliefs. As the play gets even darker, lighting designer John Malinowski’s lighting follows it into those places, illuminating the fear and horrors experienced by the cast.

It’s not a pleasant play; none are, which hold up a mirror to the audience. But the discomfort one feels at the end is also an invitation to change one’s life in response to events that reveal our true assumptions and the balancing of power and happiness. Our distress comes from a place deeper than even Miller’s words—from questioning that which we have always believed to be true.

Which makes the story one for our times as well as the times it describes. Bravo to Harbor Stage for a production that is indeed an “epic take of woe,” enabling audiences to grow as well as feel.

Review by Jeannette de Beauvoir

Images by Joe Kenehan and Kathy Wittman