By Chuck Graham, TucsonStage.com
photo by Tim Fuller
Cynthia Meier is Linda Loman, determined to make her husband Willy (Joseph McGrath) be as much man as he could manage in this Arthur Miller classic.
Just like the tea leaves in a versatile fortune teller's prescient cup, Arthur Miller's “Death of a Salesman” offers many emotional interpretations to explore on a variety of issues. For proof do not miss Matt Bowdren's fiercely directed production, running with a vengeance at The Rogue Theatre through Jan. 23, filled with myriad nuances of domestic complexity.
Upon it's world premier opening in February, 1949, on the cusp of America's Golden Decade of postwar prosperity, “Death of a Salesman” was analyzed as bursting with desire to shame the business world's corporate greed and a lack of sympathy for the home life of its employees.
Now after we have absorbed nearly 75 years of pop psychology's insight into new ways of analyzing family relationships, the traditional leadership role of fathers, the oblique roles that mothers played, the hard edge implied by the birth order of competitive siblings, etc., we can see how Miller's intuitive script includes a full catalog of household plots and motivations worthy of Shakespeare's hand.
To accomplish this depth of insight, Bowdren has pulled together a talented cast and drawn from each of them a tightly focused, award-worthy performance.
Joseph McGrath plays the roller-coaster role of 63-year-old Willy Loman, a charmer and natural sales drummer during the 1930s, but never able to take the next step into management as he grew older.
In today's parlance, we'd call Willy a gig worker. He took a sample case of products on the road, sold a bunch, came home and got paid according to how much he sold. His only responsibility was to sell more stuff.
McGrath is a brilliant Willy, reaching mercurial highs and suicidal lows, riffling back through his worn-to-threadbare emotions like a stack of faded cards suddenly short of aces.
Playing opposite Willy is Cynthia Meier as Linda Loman, in a sense the traditional housewife whose main job is to keep her husband going. Meier makes this role larger, more essential to the play's total impact, bearing an emotional weight equal to Willy, even though she has less stage time to make a greater impact.
Bowdren proves Meier is the vigorously beating heart of this production. The one who insists that honor must be paid, determined to keep patching and re-patching Willy's dreams, no matter how often he falls, no matter how bitterly their aching son Biff (Christopher Johnson) insults Willy's ability to make his own dreams come true.
Count the pumped-up Johnson among this cast of champions chipping in to create a sympathetic Biff whose gifts as a natural athlete and football star didn't count for much once high school was over. Like his father before him, Biff had no idea how to make the next move, where to go, what to do.
We watch, and feel Biff's pain, see how the sins of the father are passed on to the son, and ache at Biff's helplessness to do anything more.
Hunter Hnat picks up the pace as Biff's younger brother Happy, the lesser brother, overshadowed in his teen years. Hnat's performance of frustration gives more depth to the struggles of Willy, who was happy to ignore Happy in order to make a bigger hero out of Biff.
“Death of a Salesman” continues with performances Thursdays-Saturdays, 7:30 p.m.; matinees Saturdays-Sundays 2 p.m., to Jan. 23 in The Rogue Theatre, 300 E. University Blvd.
Tickets are $42 general admission, various discounts available. For details, theroguetheatre.org, 520-551-2053, Full COVID protocol is enforced, full vaccination ID and masks required in the theatre.
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