Review: WIFE OF A SALESMAN at Gremlin Theatre

It’s always interesting when a new play takes a familiar story and looks at it from a completely different angle. That’s what Eleanor Burgess does with Wife of a Salesman, now being presented by Girl Friday Productions at Gremlin Theatre.

The play is connected to Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, but you don't have to be an expert on Miller's play to enjoy this one. Burgess takes the wife and the mistress—two women who have every reason not to like each other—and puts them in the same room.

From there, things get pretty uncomfortable.

The story follows the Wife, played by Mo Perry, who travels from Brooklyn to Boston to confront her husband's Mistress, played by Hannah Steblay. It's an awkward meeting from the start, and neither woman seems particularly interested in making things easy for the other.

That's part of what makes the play work.

Perry and Steblay have a nice chemistry onstage, especially as their relationship starts to change. At first, you're waiting for the inevitable confrontation. But the longer they talk, the more complicated things become.

And it's not all heavy.

There are some genuinely funny moments scattered throughout the play, which helps keep the story from becoming too serious or predictable. The two women can be uncomfortable, defensive, funny and occasionally pretty blunt with each other. It feels much more like two people having a difficult conversation than actors simply delivering lines about a serious subject.

Craig Johnson has a smaller role as Jim, while Megan K. Pence appears as Angela and also directs the production. The smaller cast keeps the focus where it belongs—on the two women and the conversation taking place between them.

The set also fits the production well. The 1940s apartment gives the story a sense of place without distracting from the actors. It's a fairly simple production visually, but that's appropriate for a play where so much depends on the people in the room.

What I liked most is that Wife of a Salesman doesn't make it easy to decide who we're supposed to feel sorry for.

It's tempting to pick a side at the beginning. But as the conversation continues, you start to understand why both women have made the choices they have. That doesn't necessarily mean agreeing with them. It just makes them feel like people rather than characters who have been divided into the “good” and “bad” side of the story.

The connection to Death of a Salesman is interesting for that reason. Miller's play gives us a very different perspective on this world, while Burgess takes the women who existed around the edges of that story and finally lets them speak for themselves.

And that's really what makes this production worth seeing.

Burgess takes a character who had very little opportunity to speak for herself and gives her an entire evening.

The show is also a quick one, running about 90 minutes without an intermission. It moves along without feeling padded, and the conversation between the two women keeps changing enough that you're never quite sure where it's going next.

By the end, I found myself thinking less about Death of a Salesman and more about these two women. What they want. What they've given up. What they thought marriage was going to be. And what happens when the life you've built doesn't turn out the way you expected.

Wife of a Salesman is intimate, funny in unexpected places and uncomfortable when it needs to be. More than anything, it gives two women the opportunity to have a conversation that Miller never gave them.

And sometimes giving those characters a chance to finally speak is enough to make a familiar story feel completely different.

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