Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman Broadway Reviews

*CRITIC'S PICK* Now at the Winter Garden Theater, “Death of a Salesman” has returned to Broadway, yet again in triumph. We haven’t exactly had a chance to miss it; four years ago, Wendell Pierce and Sharon D Clarke were playing Willy and Linda...

*CRITIC'S PICK* Now at the Winter Garden Theater, “Death of a Salesman” has returned to Broadway, yet again in triumph. We haven’t exactly had a chance to miss it; four years ago, Wendell Pierce and Sharon D Clarke were playing Willy and Linda Loman only a few blocks away. Still, we don’t begrudge a few Hamlets every season. You’re telling me Nathan Lane and Laurie Metcalf were available? And the director Joe Mantello? To quote Willy’s older brother, Ben, played here by a sharklike Jonathan Cake: “One must go in to fetch a diamond out.”

It’s an arresting image that signals the production’s bold, stylized approach to this canonical text, often treated as an antique that requires only a feather duster to be brought back to life. More than any staging I’ve seen, this version, dir...

It’s an arresting image that signals the production’s bold, stylized approach to this canonical text, often treated as an antique that requires only a feather duster to be brought back to life. More than any staging I’ve seen, this version, directed by Joe Mantello and starring Nathan Lane and Laurie Metcalf as Willy and Linda Loman, casts the play in an existential light. We witness not just a critique of the fallacies inherent in the so-called American Dream (or Willy’s meretricious understanding of it), but also a more resonant examination of the isolation and loneliness of life, the fear that comes with the waning of hope, the tenuousness of human connection, and the desperation that follows.

In contrast, Metcalf’s Linda stretches beyond the role of capable homemaker. Her devout commitment to her unraveling husband, and to keeping the peace between Willy and their sons, Biff (Christopher Abbott) and Happy (Ben Ahlers), nearly reaches a ...

In contrast, Metcalf’s Linda stretches beyond the role of capable homemaker. Her devout commitment to her unraveling husband, and to keeping the peace between Willy and their sons, Biff (Christopher Abbott) and Happy (Ben Ahlers), nearly reaches a tipping point. Mantello further amplifies the play’s flashback scenes by double-casting the boys as younger versions of themselves (Joaquin Consuelos and Jake Termine), warmly illuminated by Jack Knowles’ otherwise stark lighting design.

What can also be said of this production is that director Joe Mantello—when he directed Lane 30 years back in Love! Valour! Compassion!, they first talked about this venture—has approached the enterprise not as his need to impose radical director...

What can also be said of this production is that director Joe Mantello—when he directed Lane 30 years back in Love! Valour! Compassion!, they first talked about this venture—has approached the enterprise not as his need to impose radical directorial changes so’s to differentiate this Death of a Salesman from that of predecessors. Instead, he’s approached the task by doing something more impressively radical. He researched Miller’s initial manuscripts, discovering that the playwright had early on intended to have two actors playing Biff, Happy and less athletic friend, more intelligently accomplishing Bernard so that they can be seen as the boys when younger.

Mantello’s staging is largely traditional and respectful, but it gives the play a more dreamlike, cinematic feel than usual. More than any previous Salesman I’ve seen, this rendition truly seems to be taking place in Willy’s fragmented mind, wi...

Mantello’s staging is largely traditional and respectful, but it gives the play a more dreamlike, cinematic feel than usual. More than any previous Salesman I’ve seen, this rendition truly seems to be taking place in Willy’s fragmented mind, with Chloe Lamford’s set design suggesting a massive, dilapidated garage (the numerous pillars, though, seem unnecessary). Besides a few pieces of furniture here and there, the main scenic element is the full-size car that Willy drives on in the opening scene and drives off for his final fateful excursion.

When a classic play like Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman returns to Broadway for yet another revival, it's bound to attract attention. Doubly so when the cast includes Broadway powerhouses like Nathan Lane and Laurie Metcalf. But whether it's a...

When a classic play like Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman returns to Broadway for yet another revival, it's bound to attract attention. Doubly so when the cast includes Broadway powerhouses like Nathan Lane and Laurie Metcalf. But whether it's a fondness for great American classics, a bias for the actors, or familiarity from your high school English curriculum that piques your interest, this revival is one to see. Nearly 80 years after Salesman was first performed, Joe Mantello directs a production that proves the play's sharp thorns have not dulled over time.

But first and last, Salesman is Willy’s story, and generation after Broadway generation has thrown its best into the role, from Lee J. Cobb, Fredric March (in the 1951 film), George C. Scott, Brian Dennehy and Dustin Hoffman to Philip Seymour Hoffm...

But first and last, Salesman is Willy’s story, and generation after Broadway generation has thrown its best into the role, from Lee J. Cobb, Fredric March (in the 1951 film), George C. Scott, Brian Dennehy and Dustin Hoffman to Philip Seymour Hoffman and Wendell Pierce. Lane takes his place among the best, his Willy Loman a powder keg of frustration and disappointment and deep, deep sadness. Lane uses his loud, outside voice to excellent effect, his shouts of exasperation and anger giving way to instant regret and recrimination. Watch, future Willys, and pay attention.

Miller’s traveling salesman is here something of a sad clown running out of gas. But like the handsome, burgundy Chevy that actually pulls up onstage (one curious anachronism among several), Lane doesn’t have the air of a beat-up workhorse. He is...

Miller’s traveling salesman is here something of a sad clown running out of gas. But like the handsome, burgundy Chevy that actually pulls up onstage (one curious anachronism among several), Lane doesn’t have the air of a beat-up workhorse. He is undoubtedly gifted and capable in the part: tender, forceful, and connected to the text. But his natural gentility is tough to dress down. It worked in his favor for his Tony-winning turn as the monstrous Roy Cohn in “Angels in America,” but buying him as an end-of-his-rope everyman taxes the imagination.

No matter. This is a solid production of a play that continues to reflect aspects of American life and works its way into our heart and consciousness with an almost gravitational pull. While Linda gets some of the showiest speeches — which Metcalf ...

No matter. This is a solid production of a play that continues to reflect aspects of American life and works its way into our heart and consciousness with an almost gravitational pull. While Linda gets some of the showiest speeches — which Metcalf delivers with attention-demanding skill — Willy remains its absolute center. His plight could be that of any white-collar worker on the verge of obsolescence due to a cheaper Gen Z workforce or, more likely, the advent of AI. And in a career-best performance, Lane shuffle-steps across the stage while his eyes dart around in a state of addled bewilderment. Though he’s unmoored from reality as well as his own life, he manages to close one final deal. And we’ve all willingly signed on the dotted line.

Down to the smallest roles, this production is astutely cast, and its arresting design elements add a suitably shabby grandeur to the play’s unsparing view of America’s broken promises. Mantello does some of his finest work in a heartfelt revival...

Down to the smallest roles, this production is astutely cast, and its arresting design elements add a suitably shabby grandeur to the play’s unsparing view of America’s broken promises. Mantello does some of his finest work in a heartfelt revival that will be remembered for the estimable Lane’s career-crowning performance. It’s magnificent theater.

Yet director Joe Mantello’s pummeling revival, which opened Thursday night, accomplishes what this play at its most potent should. Yes, you leave raving about the sterling performances of Nathan Lane and Laurie Metcalf and the striking stagecraft. ...

Yet director Joe Mantello’s pummeling revival, which opened Thursday night, accomplishes what this play at its most potent should. Yes, you leave raving about the sterling performances of Nathan Lane and Laurie Metcalf and the striking stagecraft. But, for more than a few people I overheard on the way out, it also powerfully summoned a tougher topic: their own lives.

The reference to that famous 1950s family sitcom applies here because, boy, are the performances big, broad and occasionally very funny. Led by Nathan Lane and Laurie Metcalf, the ensemble in this Joe Mantello-directed production acts up a storm of c...

The reference to that famous 1950s family sitcom applies here because, boy, are the performances big, broad and occasionally very funny. Led by Nathan Lane and Laurie Metcalf, the ensemble in this Joe Mantello-directed production acts up a storm of category 6 proportions. There’s more acting going on at the Winter Garden than the rest of Broadway combined, and that includes “Oh, Mary!”

That it works – that this show teases out disdain and sympathy for its family in equal measure – is a testament to Lane, for whom Willy Loman has been a career-long aspiration. (A production with Mantello has been in the works for over three deca...

That it works – that this show teases out disdain and sympathy for its family in equal measure – is a testament to Lane, for whom Willy Loman has been a career-long aspiration. (A production with Mantello has been in the works for over three decades; this show’s protracted path owes in part to its producer Scott Rudin, now in the midst of a comeback several years after allegations of bullying.) Lane’s trademark brassiness lends the character’s long-winded rants an improbably winsome sheen, his embarrassments a piercing ache. There’s a hypnotic rhythm to the madness of his Willy; when it’s time to go, he nearly takes the show with him. It’s a bravura turn, but the show’s heart remains Linda, whom Metcalf imbues with crisp practicality. Dutiful, entirely un-naive and blisteringly angry, she is devastatingly economical even in her most withering and emotionally prostrate moments, Metcalf conveying the exhaustion of a woman used to holding everything together.

Watching director Joe Mantello’s monumental yet intimate revival of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, it’s also hard to suppress thoughts of the not-yet-dead huckster running our country. In 1949, Miller could not have predicted an American ...

Watching director Joe Mantello’s monumental yet intimate revival of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, it’s also hard to suppress thoughts of the not-yet-dead huckster running our country. In 1949, Miller could not have predicted an American economy perched so precariously on fraud, speculation, and antihuman tech. At least, not quite. There are signs of technology’s power to capture reality in a wire recorder that the young supervisor Howard (John Drea) demonstrates for a befuddled Willy Loman (Nathan Lane). In another scene, careworn spouse Linda (Laurie Metcalf), tells Willy the refrigerator needs a new belt. His bilious reply:

And as played by Nathan Lane and John Drea in Joe Mantello’s exquisitely directed Broadway revival, which has several Steppenwolf Theatre influences, it will sock you in the gut. Sure did me. And I’ve seen this play countless times. Then again, w...

And as played by Nathan Lane and John Drea in Joe Mantello’s exquisitely directed Broadway revival, which has several Steppenwolf Theatre influences, it will sock you in the gut. Sure did me. And I’ve seen this play countless times. Then again, when you get close to Willy’s age, you also start to see this play differently. Very, very differently.

I locked in on Salesman during this scene, stirred up by that feeling of then-and-now colliding in an uncertain and purgatorial theatrical space. But for too much of this spare staging on a grand scale, now open at Broadway’s none-too-intimate Wint...

I locked in on Salesman during this scene, stirred up by that feeling of then-and-now colliding in an uncertain and purgatorial theatrical space. But for too much of this spare staging on a grand scale, now open at Broadway’s none-too-intimate Winter Garden Theatre, the same clarity of purpose was not present. Most of Mantello’s gorgeous staging is more impressive than moving, a thing to be admired more than fully engaged with.

At the center is Lane, delivering one of the most electrifying performances of his career. He doesn’t play Willy as a quiet, worn-down man. He plays him as a live wire—sarcastic, pleading, combative, tender, often within a single line. What’s m...

At the center is Lane, delivering one of the most electrifying performances of his career. He doesn’t play Willy as a quiet, worn-down man. He plays him as a live wire—sarcastic, pleading, combative, tender, often within a single line. What’s most striking is the musicality of his voice. This isn’t a musical, and yet it often feels like one when he speaks. Lane shapes Miller’s language as if he’s singing it, or delivering a Shakespearean soliloquy—each phrase carefully pitched, rising and falling with rhythm and intention. He pivots in an instant from buoyant, almost giddy enthusiasm to naked self-pity, then back again, without strain. The shifts are seamless and mesmerizing.

There are lessons aplenty and breathtaking moments in this production, as in almost any production of “Death of a Salesman” since its debut in 1949. That was just the third year of the Tony Awards, and it won six of them, plus the Pulitzer Prize ...

There are lessons aplenty and breathtaking moments in this production, as in almost any production of “Death of a Salesman” since its debut in 1949. That was just the third year of the Tony Awards, and it won six of them, plus the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The first Broadway revival, 26 years later, didn’t win any Tonys, although George C. Scott was nominated. I don’t know the reasons why the current producers have decided to mount this seventh production of the play on Broadway so soon after the sixth. But surely there is a relevant cautionary lesson right in the play, maybe that line that Biff finally says to Willy about prizes.

A boxy old car drives onstage at the beginning of Death of a Salesman, its headlights glaring out at the audience, and sad-sack schlepper Willy Loman gets out of it, defeated, a heavy briefcase in each hand. At first, this may seem like the wrong kin...

A boxy old car drives onstage at the beginning of Death of a Salesman, its headlights glaring out at the audience, and sad-sack schlepper Willy Loman gets out of it, defeated, a heavy briefcase in each hand. At first, this may seem like the wrong kind of omen: When yet another revival of Arthur Miller’s 1949 drama pulls up on Broadway, beat up and weighed down by 75 years’ worth of travel and baggage, it is fair to wonder whether this vehicle has any tread left on the tires, any gas left in the tank. You might even be inclined to walk right by the Winter Garden Theatre—where this version has parked itself, directed by Joe Mantello and starring Nathan Lane—without a second thought. But that would be a grave mistake: This shattering new production cannot be overlooked. Attention, as Willy’s wife famously declares, must be paid.

At the Winter Garden, Joe Mantello’s production of Death of a Salesman drops Nathan Lane’s Willy Loman into what looks like a gigantic, dimly lit warehouse. It’s hard to generate a sense of domestic intimacy in such cavernous surroundings. Lane...

At the Winter Garden, Joe Mantello’s production of Death of a Salesman drops Nathan Lane’s Willy Loman into what looks like a gigantic, dimly lit warehouse. It’s hard to generate a sense of domestic intimacy in such cavernous surroundings. Lane just about wins the battle, although it’s Laurie Metcalf as Willy’s wife, Linda, who commands more attention, not to mention the glossy Chevrolet that rolls onto the stage at the start of proceedings.