Review: Death of a Salesman

Death of a Salesman Lands in Edinburgh

When the American dream turns into the American nightmare. That’s Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, and in David Hayman, Scottish theatre has certainly found a Willie Loman to express this most miserable of tragedies to the fullest. Mostly encountered in the classroom, it’s easily dismissed as one more ‘American Classic’, yet it’s a fable which rings as true now as it ever did when first staged in 1949.

It’s a simple tale – the best stories typically are – of one older travelling salesman’s life coming undone. Loman’s decades of graft haven’t won him the riches or esteem promised, and the fantasies he wove to deny reality are growing brittle.

**Daniel Cahill**, **David Hayman**, and **Michael Wallace**

A Modern Tragedy

Hayman captures his advancing mental frailty with a superbly physical performance, body shifting between chest-out bravado and slooped shoulder defeat. He still talks big, but promises to his wife of a desk job in New York ring hollow long before a fateful meeting with the boss, and his dreams for 30-something son Biff (Daniel Cahill), are frankly delusional. His frequent retreats into ‘happier’ times might be senility, or ‘only’ his mind buckling after years and years of faking it without the commensurate making it.

“Hayman captures his frailty with a superbly physical performance”

Director Andy Arnold strips the domestic furnishings from proceedings, placing Willie, family, and friends on a set bordering on the austere. Neil Haynes’ elegant set, of only a few chairs, two windows, an abstracted picket fence, and the image of two ghostly elm trees towering behind, strips proceedings of any kitsch or nostalgia. It’s a setting which challenges the viewer to consider Willie’s last day as a contemporary tale of the world as it is, not was.

Willie’s Flawed Dreams

Willie’s inability to accept mediocrity in a world which seems only to prize the exceptional certainly isn’t archaeological. Hayman doesn’t try to make Loman likeable – he isn’t – but is still hugely sympathetic. We see the missteps and blemishes in his hallucinatory reminiscences, but there’s a warmth in his voice, and a sense of possibility absent in the present. Maybe Biff did have a promising future on a football scholarship, and maybe Willie would have made his name overseeing his rich brother Ben’s (Stewart Ennis) timberlands in Alaska. However, Willie’s ideas of being a ‘well-liked’ character come without accountability to oneself or others, and humans raised on such a diet make bad choices.

Family Dynamics

Younger son Happy (Michael Wallace) might have post-war patter, but his relentless pursuit of women and inflated self-regard would make him right at home in the ‘manosphere’. Wallace offers a defective golden retriever of a human being, talking a good game, but every inch the child of Willie’s self-delusion. Biff, on the other hand, saw through his dad’s bravado just in time to flunk out of high school. Cahill is superb in the role, injecting beaten-down heroism into Biff’s constant attempts to speak and live truthfully – an escaped cult member trying to rescue his family without getting sucked back in.

“Cahill is superb in the role, injecting beaten-down heroism into Biff’s constant attempts to speak and live truthfully…”

Then of course, there’s Linda’s devoted Wife Linda (Beth Marshall), well aware of Willie’s tendency to spin stories, but always on hand to point to what they have. In this, the play does show its age: Willie’s mortgage is almost paid off, and even if Willie, “would like to own something outright before it’s broken!” – he still has a home, a devoted life partner, and at least one son who doesn’t totally despise him. Even when his job with the firm he’s devoted his life to becomes unsafe, his long-time neighbour, and highly successful lawyer Charley (a supremely affable and genially anarchic Benny Young) would happily give him a salaried job.

A Relentless Descent

But for all of this, Willie’s still been trying to kill himself for weeks when we first meet him, and you can only play Russian Roulette for so long. With one son too fleckless to help, and the other too broken, Willie’s chances are never great. Arnold never lets the momentum fail in Willie’s relentless, yet unrushed journey into despair. Still, there’s an elegance in the simple shifts of props and in Rory Beaton’s lighting as the drama winds through living rooms, bedrooms, restaurants and offices. Grinding but inevitable, matters play out, laced here and there with a little humour, but always teetering on the edge of disaster.

**Bailey Newsome**, **Faye Guiffo**, and **Michael Wallace**

The only ornamentation falls to Niroshini Thambar’s melancholy snippets of music singing from the strings of Fay Guiffo’s fiddle, Simon Donaldson’s mandolin, and Gillian Massey’s Flute. It’s an effective addition, and all the more potent for not being overused.

That said, the show does enjoy the relative luxury of a performer for every role, leaving room for Charlene Boyd, Fay Guiffo, Bailey Newsome, and Gillian Massey to make memorable characters with minimal stage time. There are no weak links in this production, and it shows.

Hayman’s Commanding Presence

Ultimately though, any production of Miller’s seminal text rests on the shoulders of the condemned man himself, and Hayman is a superb choice. Whether evincing naive boyishness in his escape to the past or faltering under the weight of the present, he is sensational. Yes, we’re following him on a long day’s journey into misery, but looking away isn’t an option.

All images: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan