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Sharon D Clarke Shines in ‘Death of a Salesman’ on Broadway


Willy Loman should be the focus of Salesman’s death. It is his death spiral that forms the heart of the story Arthur Millerlegendary plays of. But in the latest Broadway revival, starring Wire and Treme stars Wendell Pierce as Willy, open tonight (Hudson Theatre, through January 15, 2023) —With Lomans played by an all-Black main cast — the producer is Linda, Willy’s wife, played by Sharon D Clarke.

Clarke, Tony nominated this year Because Caroline, or Change, delivering stunning, powerful motion performance. The play is still set in the Brooklyn and New York of 1949, and Boston many years before that, and although not a word of the play has changed, we now see its desperation — about what that a family is struggling to aspire and succeed, and also trying desperately to prevent failure and disaster — can also be viewed through the lens of race and racisminvisible and unspoken forces emphasize all the positives that the family grasps and every negative that can engulf them.

The production was directed by Miranda Cromwell, who won an Olivier Award alongside co-director Marianne Elliott for the West End and Young Vic productions, where this Broadway production originated. (Pierce and Clarke are reprising their London roles; he’s been nominated for an Oliver Award; she’s won an Olivier Award and a Critics Circle Award.)

The play has been “revived for a demographic culture that has yet to experience access to the American dream, which is at the heart of the play. That’s why the Loman family is black,” André De Shields, who plays ghostly Ben, Willy’s brother, said in a recent interview. The play closes at the beginning and end with a soft, meaningful gospel song that promises recovery and relief: I will follow my path / Direct that river home / Until we meet again / When the trumpet sounds.

Just as Ben emerges from the side of the stage, wrapped in cold, dry ice and tries to convince his brother to achieve the same financial wealth he already has, so the show The show has the air of a ghost story, a story set in the disjointed pieces of time and reality that Miller wrote in the play.

Anna Fleischle’s set is just a domestic piece. It is a type of house in the process of formation and reconstruction, placed around a series of foundations. There is a kitchen type in front of us (table, some chairs), and a bedroom type (two lamps, platform). Tables and chairs are suspended from the ceiling of the theater; Doors and window frames appear and disappear.

Willy’s precariousness in life is immediately evident in his design and directing decisions, as well as his lack of control over not only his material and personal circumstances, but also his voices sped madly in his head. However, these iconic hammer notes are overdone — They’re too literal, they’re messy and confusing, as are the actors performing dramatic freeze poses (with additional flashes of light). ), as if in a motion layer, to convey the change in time.

Pierce’s performance from the start was downright frugal; This Willy Loman is off-limits when we meet him — feuding with his favored son Biff (Khris Davis), and barely acknowledging the other, who has no roots. , gender-focused and extremely ironic named Happy (McKinley Belcher III). Willy was forever a mania—a conflicted smile, pompous look, outbursts of anger, tenderness and rudeness around wives and children, bosses, neighbors, and ghostly tormentors. He’s a good, growling husband, a snob, often in a free-fall, a pillar ready to fall — and what’s obvious to everyone seems obvious to everyone. with him from the very beginning.

Biff came to know himself, with relief, like an idiot, but a fool, if freed from the burden of his father’s fervent imaginary trust in him, might find himself .

Willy is a human being, and so are his sons, with Davis angered by his father’s betrayal, and his deliverance – which could in fact be the deliverance of the whole family – is say no to the mantle of misplaced expectations Willy has placed on him. Biff is not a mythical football hero, now in a green suit ready to conquer New York; Biff came to know himself, with relief, like an idiot, but an idiot, if freed from the burden of his father’s imaginary, fervent trust in him, might find himself me.

But the Lomans did not want this truth; Just like the embossed and underlined scene decor on the neurotic canvas, this is a family troubled with self-made deceptions around Willy’s brilliance. They must keep their current lie to keep their defective emperor on his wobbly throne, even though Linda, Happy, and most especially Biff know the emperor has no clothes. Most urgently, Linda knows her husband’s ego and status must continue to be built on illusions and fantasies to keep him alive.

Next to Linda, Willy’s strongest defender is neighbor Charley (Delaney Williams), a seemingly dumbass who really sees Willy for who he is and really wants to do all he can for him. he; we see both the pride and the pain gripping Willy as he sees Bernard (Stephen Stocking), Charley’s son, begin life on the highway to achieve success, wealth, and respectability. normally. Willy knew that Biff would probably never get involved and that eluded him, too.

This scene, as does Willy’s other trans-dimensional scenes – beg his lousy boss Howard (the extremely evil Blake DeLong) for his job, or dance with Linda in their kitchen for an intimate moment. sweet family, or when Biff as a teenage boy discovers a secret affair — slows him down. It is here that we can clearly see his hopes and possibilities blooming and shrinking.

Clarke charts a nuanced yet stressful journey for Linda, and executes it with such a sharp balance of mood and timing that it’s her journey that feels enjoyable best.

Howard made Willy get a lighter and light a cigarette for him. He made him beg, and then mocked him for begging. He assures Willy will lose one of the last pieces of his dignity, then tells him to pull himself together. He startled when he touched Willy, he looked at him as if he were nothing – the ugliness of this scene is accentuated by Howard’s whiteness, and Willy Loman’s added peril, as was a black man in 1949 with declining mental health, looking for a new job of equal status.

Throughout the show, and amid all the tireless and weary shouting men around her, Clarke charted a nuanced yet intense road map for Linda, and did it with enthusiasm. sharp adjustment of moods and times when her journey feels most enjoyable. She would do anything to support her husband, and her fierceness turned to condemnation of her thoughtless sons in the most angry way. Just like she did in Caroline, or Change, Clarke shows that she is a professional text navigator and interpreter, and in doing so, she will engage the audience with her. We understand Linda, we feel Linda, with real clarity and depth because of Clarke.

Clarke locates in Linda Loman a supportive wife, who is hiding her husband’s suicide tool, who is also engaged in a desperate, private mission of salvation that she knows is futile. When we see Willy desperately sowing seeds in the barren soil of his garden, we think of King Lear, shrunk, shriveled, and mad over exploding heather. It’s more painful than pathetic.

Miller’s gameplay is repetitive, with so many delayed revelations, so many unsettled confrontations, and so many unspoken words, that the ultimate family confrontation, where everything is completely laid out on the table, is a relief of many kinds—not least because the audience has been helplessly watching the Loman family pot simmer for more than three hours. When Biff, in Davis’ best shot, cries and eloquently pleads to be freed from his father, you wish that Willy, Happy, and Linda would hear what he was saying — and not only save him, but even save themselves.

But Biff, of course, was misheard and misunderstood by his father, and the final mark of the gruesome cauldron tragedy came into view. The final words and crystallizing notes in the play “pray” belong to Clarke, who, as an extremely assured production curator, brings both the producer and the audience to a deep conclusion. correctness of the play. For all the male sounds and rage, this Salesman’s Death felt really, and rightly, all about her.

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