"Death of a Salesman". Pilch. Review by Victoria Tayler

 Death of a Salesman, Pilch

I thought I was done with Death of a Salesman. It was a relic of the past, a spectre of the English A-level specification. Drilling quotations into my memory over the long period of Covid lockdowns for exams which would never come just about did me in. As the play approached, those stagnant quotes were all I could think about. “Why must everyone conquer the world?” As graduation approached, I was thinking the same thing. “The jungle is dark but full of diamonds.” Much like the tumultuous OUDS scene, I thought wryly, (Spoiler alert: this is one of the diamonds). After imbibing quotations for two years, the characters in Death of a Salesman started to feel static, emblematic, unsurprising. The tragedy felt over-egged. 

Tiptoe Productions saw a different vision. Their interpretation of Death of a Salesman, whilst true to Miller’s demanding and extensive stage directions, feels like discovering the play for the first time. Actually I’m quite jealous of those who get to have this rather than Sparknotes  as their introduction to Arthur Miller. The director’s note on the programme says the team strove for “honest, real performances” focused on “private conversations” (a nod to the real title of the play), evoking a world of small intimacies and evils. They certainly achieved that. Despite knowing every scene in honestly too much detail, the emotional agony felt entirely fresh. I crossed my fingers for a happy ending, and cried when I realised (anew) that it wouldn’t come. 

It’s an effect which can only be achieved by extreme talent, which this production company has in spades. The acting and directing brought forward characters I didn’t even know I cared about. My memory of Charlie (Cameron Maiklem) had been somewhat two-dimensional. He was the good neighbour representing the far off ideal of a content life. I hadn’t anticipated how reliant on him we would feel as an audience, nor the hopes I would pin on his nagging humour and gentle persistence, as though he could change the ending of the play. Played right, he’s half the show. The character of uncle Ben (Tristan Wood) is entirely indecipherable and yet sinister in the extreme, never ghostly, but never tangible. Joe Rachman as Bernard, accent leaving something to be desired, is moving in his resigned compassion towards Willy, which comes through even with few lines. I’ve only ever seen Rachman play a kind of alienness (cockroaches and troubled children), but he carries off Bernard’s quiet humanity rather well. 

Ollie Gillam is convincing as the internally conflicted Biff Loman, shining particularly bright in the restaurant scene where Biff finally throws off (or at least, gets close to throwing off) the delusions of grandeur which the Loman family use to shield themselves from tragedy. It’s a tricky scene, requiring minute switches between despair and denial, but Gillam embodies it well, oscillating between a sort of worn out resignation and exasperated shouting. He’s not the only one with a tough part to play. Death of a Salesman is hard work, not least because Miller loved to hammer a rather blunt point home. The character of Happy is, in large part, repetition: he’s lost weight, Pap and he’s gonna get married. But Ezana Betru plays Happy well. His repetitions are sometimes funny, but usually strike as disappointingly fresh in every scene. 

If social media discourse is to be believed, Miller’s writing of women leaves something to be desired, but Hope Healy’s acting certainly does not. Healy can channel acquiescence, forced formality, and out-all rage, often all at once. Her love for Willy (Nate Wintraub), though obviously tiresome, is so damn believable. Both Healy and Wintraub play age extremely convincingly. Willy’s final scene, in which he plans his own death, is mortifying in how old and frail he looks. It becomes almost embarrassing to watch him steal off into the basement, and it’s played with a run off of the stage, rather than a walk, which makes it almost child-like. Wintraub’s ability to provoke an icky, half-sympathetic, half-disgusted reaction nails the tone of the play and makes the tragedy hit that little bit harder.

Death of a Salesman is hard to direct, not least because Miller’s stage directions are pretty all-encompassing and demanding, but also because the characters are at once heavily allegorical and horribly realistic. With that sensitive balance in mind, I think it’s difficult to do something new, and the only alternative is to do it extremely well. But this production does a bit of both. It gives new edges and textures to a familiar cast of characters, and carries off the tragedy with the effect it was meant to have, which could have been easily lost in the hands of a less capable team. On another directorial note, the staging in this play is perfect: creative, intentional, clear. Every on-stage character is visible! All of the time! Hallelujah.  

I had mixed feelings about the score. The score for this production is original (!) and generally works really well. My only note is that Willy’s death scene is scored with a rather beautiful, but rather grand, piece of music, and I wonder if this conflicts with the ‘private conversations’ interpretation of the tragedy. Compared with the quiet intensity elsewhere, the music can feel a little incongruous. Yet I suppose it can also act as a necessary piece of cathartic release.

Joe Rachman’s accent is less American, more a mix of Irish-English-American-himself, and Ollie Gillam can’t convincingly smoke a cigarette, but some little detail had to make this feel like a student production and not a professional play. It could almost be deliberate. Afterall, if this team were too perfect, they’d leave none for the rest of us.