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Death Of A Salesman
- tour
Playwright - Arthur Miller
Director - Neil Sissons
Designer - Neil Irish
Lighting Designer - Jason Taylor
Company - Compass Theatre Company
Website www.compasstheatrecompany.com
Venue - Seen at Theatre Royal Glasgow
Run Time - 3hr 15 mins including 15 interval
Dates - tour listings
Reviewer - Thelma Good
The dangers of selling dreams to children.
In its time seen as an indictment of the American Dream this production
seems more about the flaws of selling dreams not to customers, or citizens
but to your children - an uneasy insight into parenting. It is interesting
to see but hampered by strange casting decisions, Howard is several decades
too old and Willy a decade too young and by accents too wavery or too
Irish in the case of Linda.
Nicholas Ashbury's performance of Biff grows during the play and
moves most at the end. Son Biff is puffed up into a unruly hot air balloon
by his father's dreams, - unable to take orders from anyone, secretly
longing to work solely with his hands. His brother Happy, Stephen Campbell
Moore, painfully ignored by their parents has a fine line in lies
and charm, an even better deceiver than their father - well captured by
Moore in a fluid physical style. Willy Loman, Graham Turner,
doesn't quite provide enough of the bullying, pushing urgency of a man
who never sees or loves the world for what it is, so possessed is he of
future success. Caroline John's Linda Loman is the kind of wife
you want to kick. She's always fretting, never seeing or dealing with
anything more than the family finances. This family never learnt to love
or listen to their hearts.
The production's set has the Loman's house with its pathetic often-broken-before-payed-for
bits and pieces. The out of the house, (it's never quite a home) scenes
happen in a no man's land at the front of the stage. The clumsy feel these
have frequently work for rather than against the play. Many of the best
scenes of the play happen there. Biff's childhood friend Bernard's meeting
with Willy when he has grown to an adulthood neither Willy or his boys
have reached is movingly and tenderly played by Robert Cameron
in his first professional role. The lostness of Willy well brought out
when Bernard's father Charley, Peter Dineen again offers him a
job and money from a wallet open and full of notes, and Willy hasn't the
sense to accept. Gailie Morrison showed varied lively characterisation
as various women in Willy and Happy's lives.
This production with good individual performances has some but not enough
of the anguish it can arouse. Or maybe it is we are too used to our dreams,
reasonable or vain glorious being cut down by reality's savage scythe.
© Thelma Good 13 October 2001
Tour dates
20 - 29 Sept Gateway Chester 01244 340392
2 - 6 Oct Theatre Royal Wakefield 01924 211311
9 - 13 Oct Swan Theatre Worcester 01905 27322
23 - 27 Oct Theatre Royal Glasgow 0141 332 9000
10 Oct - 1 Nov The Swan Stratford on Avon 01789 403403
6 - 10 Nov King's Theatre Edinburgh 0131 529 6000
13 - 17 Nov Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds 01284 769505
20 - 24 Nov His Majesty's Theatre Aberdeen 01224 641122
27 Nov - 1 Dec Grand Theatre Swansea 01792 475715
4 - 8 Dec Lyceum Theatre Sheffield 0114 249 6000
End of Tour
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