Death of a Salesman Play Review

Downtown Debut:

Death of a Salesman

Are you ever watching a show or a movie in which you can literally feel your blood pressure rising as you wait for another wrench to be thrown into the plot? Well, that is how I felt while watching Death of a Salesman. Written by Arthur Miller, a very well -known American playwright. Making its debut at the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company, I was able to watch this production.

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This play is a critically acclaimed masterpiece, being one of Arthur Miller’s greatest works. This play won the Pulitzer Prize for drama, the Tony award for Best Play and has been put on Broadway four times. I can see why this play, focused on a man who all he knows is to chase after the American dream, is so well known and well liked, but I simply cannot fully agree with all of the rave over this play.

Going in I didn’t know much about this play, simply because the timing didn’t work out with when we will be studying this play in class. With that said, it was hard to make out what was happening at certain points. With all the screaming associated with Willie Loman it was hard to understand what was going on.

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The casting was very well done and distinct. I believe the director, Brian Phillips, filled the shoes of every character with fitting actors. On a side note, for our performance the man who played Willie Loman is not who typically plays him, which could go wrong but I would have never guessed he was a step in. Biff and Happy, played by Justin McCombs and Jared Joplin, had their own unique personalities. But I wouldn’t have been phased if they were brothers in real life since they played the “brother” role so well! Linda Loman, played by Annie Fitzpatrick, started off a little shaky but certainly developed throughout the performance.

The character development helped distract form the blandness of the stage and costuming. The stage had no variation causing confusion when the play “changed’ scenes. It was like they were in the kitchen and outside all at the same time! I do understand that the budget and stage space was small, so they had to work with what they had.

Although the costumes were fitting to the time period they are portraying in the play, I think each character had an average of two costume changes, which really did not help the “boring” factor. Although I really enjoyed Biff and Happys’ costumes during the flashback scenes.