Death of a Salesman

Last month, eight Nebraska meatpackers took a chance on a dream, plunked down money for the Powerball Lottery, and won the biggest jackpot in U.S. History.

The rise in popularity of insanely large lotteries, reality shows with millions of dollars in cash at the end of the road, and Internet get-quick schemes shows that the dream of the good life is as alive today as it was for Willy Loman in 1949 when Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” first debuted on Broadway. The UC Davis production, under the direction of Kent Nicholson, now playing on the Main Stage, will feel as up to date with today’s struggling families as it did to audiences nearly 50 years ago.

Tom McCauley, a working actor for more than 30 years, and now an MFA candidate, is an excellent choice for the role of Willy Loman, who has worked as a traveling salesman all of his life, but now, at 60, is wearing down and trying to decide how he’s going to support his family. McCauley has perfectly captured the look of a man beaten down by life, a little frightened of what lies ahead, but still trying to keep his dreams alive. Despite his disappointments in life, Willie takes pride in two things: First, his ability to make friends, and the host of friends he has made throughout his career (“I realized that selling was the greatest career a man could want. ’Cause what could be more satisfying than to be able to go, at the age of eighty-four, into twenty or thirty different cities, and pick up a phone, and be remembered and loved and helped by so many different people?”).

Willy’s second pride is the accomplishments of his oldest son Biff (Matt Rapore), former high school football star, who Willy is convinced is going to take the professional world by storm.

Biff’s problem is that he can’t possibly live up to Willy’s grandiose fantasies for him. He never received his high school diploma and has been fired from every job he’s held. All he really wants is to move out west and work with his hands. Rapore was off to a slow start as Biff, but as his confidence grew, he gave a powerful performance. The final showdown between Biff and Willy, is skillfully handled by both actors.

In the shadow of his brother is Happy Loman (Michael Yost), who shares Willy’s inflated image of his own importance and questionable moral choices. Yost is makes the audience feel Happy’s frustrating attempts to get his father to notice him.

Lisa Klein is Linda Loman, Willy’s long-suffering wife. Linda is the stereotypical wife of the 40s, taking care of her husband’s needs, supporting his dreams, but with her own frustrations. She mostly suffers in silence and it is her emotional strength which keeps the family together, until things finally explode beyond her ability to control them.

Matt Sullivan is Charlie, Willie’s next door neighbor, who owns a successful business and whose son Bernard ®. Andrew Hess) is a successful lawyer, who has always regarded Biff as his hero.

Willy’s boss, Howard Wagner (Dan Hakim) is a young man whom Willy has known since he was a baby, but Wagner regards Willy with condescension and when Willy goes to him, hoping for a change in his work conditions and perhaps an advance on his salary so he can pay the insurance bill, Wagner fires him.

Willy is losing his grip on reality, and his life seems to be played in the here and now, and in flashbacks to Biff’s glory days and to the days when his wealthy older brother Ben (John Crosthwaite), who recently died, was still alive.

Lighting designer Daniel Goldin uses cool tones for the “here and now” and warm tones for Willy’s flashbacks.

Scenic Designer, Martin Flynn has built a massive, functional set with a colorful backdrop showing the cramped neighborhood in which the Lomans live, and a multi-level house where the action can easily move from bedroom to kitchen to hotel.

In his director’s notes, Kent Nicholson points out that, like Willy Loman, many of us are embracing a system bent on destroying us. “Today there is a cultural obsession to get ahead no matter who we leave behind.”

We have not learned much in the past nearly 50 years. We are, most of us, still Willy Loman, trying to make it in a world that seems determined to keep beating us down.

Willy took comfort in the knowledge that if he had no money to show for his lifetime, at least he had a wealth of friends. The ultimate irony was that the only people at his funeral were his family and his one close friend.

The Clock

When one thinks of music and the stage, the name “Arthur Miller” does not immediately leap to mind, and so it was surprising to discover that Miller’s “The American Clock,” which Acme Theater is performing at the Veterans Memorial Theater, under the direction of David Burmester, opens with an all-cast rendition of “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” with recorded accompaniment, and complete with an attempt by at least one performer to do a soft shoe. But music is a part of the time period of this play, which looks at the lives of Americans just before, and during The Great Depression, when music helped to take one’s mind, at least briefly, off of the dire conditions.

There are no big musical production numbers in Miller’s play, no crisp choreography or stand-out voices, but music very definitely helps set the scene at the opening, and throughout the two and a half hour play, including an audience sing-along of “On the Sunny Side of the Street” at its conclusion.

“The American Clock” follows some 40 characters, played by 14 talented actors, and how they are affected by The Depression. At the heart of the play is the Baum family, an upper class Jewish family living in Manhattan, whose gradual loss of dignity, along with fading fortunes, is exemplified by the family piano, the pride and joy of mother Rose Baum (the always competent Maddy Ryen), who begins to sell her jewelry as the family income fades. They are forced to move to Brooklyn to live with their poorer relatives (Scott Scholes, Randi Famula, and Betsy Raymond), but her pride will not allow her to sell her piano, on which she plays songs which remind her of better times in Manhattan.

Husband Moe Baum (Anthony Pinto), once a successful businessman, appears to be disconnected, both to his family and to the chaos of life around him. When he is forced to accept public assistance, he must ask his son Lee (Dara Yazdani) for subway fare, and to explain to him exactly how to fill out the paperwork.

The family’s crumbling dignity is complete when Rose finally agrees to give up her piano

Lee is the survivor, and the hope for a recovering America. ''I waited with that crazy kind of expectation that comes when there is no hope, waited for the dream to come back from wherever it had gone to hide.'' As he gives up his dreams of going to college, he learns to adapt to a simpler lifestyle and becomes a writer, an observer of the world around him, and an alter ego of playwright Miller himself.

Yazdani gives Lee Baum a believable earnestness and a resilience which makes us know that this is a kid who is going to make it, despite the hardships he must endure.

Wall Street financiers, Arthur A. Robertson (James Henderson) and Clarence (Eric Delacorte) set the stage for the coming depression in the opening scenes, where they are cautiously making plans to sell their stocks and invest the money in gold bars, because they think the banks are going to fail.

While Delacorte is sometimes difficult to understand, particularly in later scenes, Henderson brings great energy to the part of Robinson, a character which appears in several of the vignettes and helps to bind the piece into a whole.

In the heartland, the Taylor family is forced into foreclosure. ''You couldn't hardly believe the day would come when the land wouldn't give,” says Mrs. Taylor (the versatile Betsy Raymond), wife of Henry (Eric Delacorte). The effect of The Depression all across the country is demonstrated with the forced auction of the Taylor farm, and the support the family receives from their neighbors.

The play contains 19 scenes, all performed with Acme’s usual flair. Others in the cast, playing multiple roles are: Arthur Conard, Fiona Lakeland, Zach Leuchars, Julieanne Conard, Vickie Franzen and Kate Williams.

In his notes for the program, director Burmester speaks to the great resilience of the American people as they faced the Great Depression and of Arthur Miller’s “insistence that a robust belief in the country and its future was at the heart of this resilience.”

This jaded reviewer wonders whether the country will ever again see that resilience and robust belief in the country.

The Crucible

"It is truly sobering to realize that this play has never, in my lifetime, lost its relevance," writes director David Burmester in his program comments for Acme Theatre's production of "The Crucible," running through January 12 at the Veterans Memorial Theatre.

Arthur Miller's classic play concerns the Salem witch trials, which took place from June through September of 1692, during which time nineteen men and women were hanged at Gallows Hill near Salem. Another man was pressed to death by stones for refusing to submit to a trial on witchcraft charges. Hundreds of other persons faced accusations of witchcraft and dozens more languished in jail without trials. Miller, who wrote this play in the mid-1950s, intended for his play to be a metaphor for the "red scare" of the era of Senator Joe McCarthy, in which similar "witch hunts" occurred, but targeting citizens as Communists rather than disciples of Satan.

"The Crucible" is a work which still shows the mass hysteria which can evolve and destroy the lives of innocent people, whether witches or communists or Japanese interred without any proof of guilt during World War II, or Middle Easterners in 2001, detained for looking middle eastern, and therefore suspect.

It is unfortunate that some of the dialog in Acme's production is difficult to understand. Important information is rushed and the dialect occasionally makes it difficult to follow what is being said, however it is a small complaint in an otherwise powerful production.

The story begins in the bedroom of young Betty Parris (Genevieve Moreno). Betty lies comatose while her father, the Reverend Parris (Jake Stoebel) kneels at her side praying for her recovery. In the next few minutes we discover that on the previous night, Betty had been dancing in the forest with a group of girls, including Tituba, a slave from Barbados (Lusungu Mkandawire) and Abigail Williams, the Reverend's niece (Allese Thomson). Their frolic was discovered by the Reverend and when Betty cannot be awakened the next morning, rumors begin to fly that the girls had been practicing witchcraft and that Betty is bewitched.

Alarmed neighbors, Thomas and Ann Putnam (Brian Oglesby and Jill Winternitz) approach Parris with rumors that Betty was seen flying over a barn. Their daughter is also sick and they, too, feel witchcraft is the cause.

When John Proctor, a local farmer, arrives with his wife and is left alone with Abigail, we learn of their brief affair, his remorse, and the girl's intention to continue the relationship. When Proctor makes it clear that the affair is over,

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In a theatrical experiment, Acme is including in this production a scene which had been written into the original script, but which was dropped many years ago and is now rarely performed. The scene, which comes at the start of Act 2, is a brief meeting of Proctor and Abigail in the forest prior to the trial. According to director Burmester, it somewhat shifts the culpability away from Abigail because in the scene she really seems to be somewhat deranged. She is so completely caught up in what she considers her love of John and her attempts to cleanse the world of all evil ("when this world is white again what a wife I'll make you"). Burmester feels the scene gives an interesting twist to the story. Abigail's apparent mental derangement illustrates more clearly that the men of Salem have been manipulating the girls.

The new scene will run on Thursday and Saturday, and the show without the additional scene will run Friday.