"The play is about mortality and the possibility of a trace.
Willy Loman
is trying to write his name on a cake on a hot July day".
Arthur Miller, 1949
Willy Loman is 63 years. He works as a salesman. He goes
from door to door selling. Few people remember it. They have no words about it,
neither good nor bad. But Loman did not cease in its efforts. He travels and sells, even if it cost him his entire life.
Loman’s story is a classic. It
is a portrait of the American
dream rags written by Arthur Miller 64 years
ago. Death of a Salesman
was written in 1948 and released in the
Morosco Theatre, in
1949, by Elia Kazan.
Death of a Salesman was created by Miller during
the postwar period, when the American nation was already reeling from the
crisis of 1929 and the triumph of
the Allies in World War II with his optimism flooded the United States. Therefore, its revival on
Broadway by Mike Nichols on March 15th is the perfect time
to question again is not the American dream, but the post-Bretton Woods agreement.
The character of the seller defeated trying to recover his
good position is already a classic of American theater. Has been interpreted
before by actors like Dustin Hoffman, Brian Dennehy and Lee J. Cobb. However,
their profile becomes painful at a time when Wall Street and outraged occupy
the middle classes feel cheated by banks.
Willy Loman has spent his life selling
for the same company, until one
day he is fired. He is forced to
borrow money. He has shared a lifetime of marriage but deceives his own wife. Every
day he gets his kids
hate him more.
He tries desperately
to erase the mistakes he made,
but without success.
Loman uns gets only solution:
suicide, so his family can live the life
insurance money. Thus, Miller creates the effect of a tragic end. The play ends with the
grim scene of a funeral of a lonely man whose
funeral only attended by his wife and children. No friends nor enemies. No knows or curious.
Recognized
with a
Pulitzer Prize, The Death of a Salesman was a play that forced
an entire country to think that the American dream was that, a dream.
This
is a
play where everything is
questioned. The seller of
mechanical work that challenges his own failure, someone who did not progress
up the economic ladder and could not form a
family that respected him.
A
man who is fired after years of loyalty to a company. A man who is
a mirror of many today. A man who can
not transcend. "The play is about mortality and the possibility of a trace. Willy Loman
is trying to write his name on a cake on a hot July day"
said Arthur Miller for the premiere of the work, for six decades.
Mike Nichols (who has won seven Tony
Awards for his
productions on Broadway is also
known for films like The Graduate)
has been able to choose the right time, also the appropriate casting: Philip Seymour Hoffman will
play Willy Loman, Linda Emond plays the wife of
Loman and Andrew
Garfield, the actor who played the
betrayed partner Michael
Zuckerberg in the
network act in the role of
a son of Loman.
Thus, Nichols brings back a work whose distressing story touches closely, very
closely, viewers and readers.
