Death of a Salesman (c) Emilio Madrid
Broadway: Death of a Salesman
At the Winter Garden Theatre
Ten years ago, I saw my first stage production of O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh at BAM with Nathan Lane as Hickey, and for over four hours, Lane embodied the optimistic salesman’s decline into hopeless pipeless dreamer. Now, on Broadway, Lane has taken on another iconic American salesman, Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman, director Joe Mantello’s excellent, if dour, portrayal of a man looking back on his life and seeing all the mistakes that led him to where he is now. Lane is simply astonishing as Loman, who has started to hate going on the road to make sales in the New England territory, with his mind wandering and his driving erratic. If you’ve seen the poster of the current revival at the Winter Garden, there’s a Chevy, which seems to be the centerpiece metaphor for Mantello’s production, as literally represented by Chloe Lamford’s cavernous haunted warehouse set when, as the play begins, that red car enters the stage and stays there as a reminder of Willy’s successful past and failures in the present. Like Iceman, this revival is actually my first time seeing Salesman, although I have seen plenty of TV incarnations: the 1966 version with original 1949 Broadway stars Lee J. Cobb and Mildred Dunnock, and the 1985 version with the celebrated Broadway revival cast that included Dustin Hoffman. Recent Broadway revivals delivered Philip Seymour Hoffman and Wendell Pierce. Lane certainly will be remembered in this pantheon of impressive actors.
