DEATH OF A SALESMAN

At the Playhouse until March 5

Tickets: 604.873.3311

vancouverplayhouse.com

"Attention must be paid," says long-suffering Linda Loman in defense of her completely exhausted salesman husband Willy. And attention should be paid--and I expect will be paid--to this stunning Playhouse production directed by John Cooper.

With Tom McBeath as Willy Loman and Bob Frazer as Willy's troubled adult son Biff, Vancouver theatregoers knew it would be good. What we might not have expected was to be moved to tears by Arthur Miller's 60-year-old "modern" tragedy that garnered the New York Drama Critics' Circle Best Play, Pulitzer Prize for Drama and Tony Award back in 1949.

Death of a Salesman was American playwright Miller's attempt to contemporize and democratize the notion of Aristotelian tragedy: Willy is a "low-man," not a king or a prince or a character of high status, but his tragedy, nevertheless, evokes pity. If he has a fatal flaw--Aristotle's requirement of a tragic figure--it's self-delusion. Willy simply won't see things the way they really are. As a high school football hero, his son Biff didn't "borrow"-- things he stole them. And Willy on his last sales trip didn't make a killing--he came home empty-handed. At 63, Willy has lost his salaried position and now works on commission. He's a broken man with a paid-up life insurance policy.

As with all truly timeless plays, there's no need to drag Death of a Salesman into the 21st century with onstage cellphones, TVs or modern conveniences. Director Cooper and set designer Pam Johnson keep it in the '40s with an old round-cornered refrigerator, a small range and a wooden kitchen table and chairs. Highrise apartments stage left and right loom over the small Loman household, blocking out the sun, making sure nothing grows. Alison Green keeps Linda in the printed frocks and sensible shoes our mothers or grandmothers used to wear. Lighting designer Gerald King makes everything slightly sepia-toned like old bed linen.

Willy Loman, like Hamlet, is a role to aspire to, and McBeath is ready and more than able. In the flashbacks, he stands taller, moves quicker, and is pumped up with Willy's expansive but unfounded optimism. He's loud, assertive and ebullient. But in the present tense, McBeath is stooped, indecisive--an old bear attacked by dogs. It's a heartbreaker.

And what a role for Frazer. So often, it seems, he's the good-looking boy next door, the handsome villain or the father in It's A Wonderful Life. Here's a role he can really sink his teeth into, and he does. If there is any glimmer of hope in the play, it lives in Biff and Frazer, who in the dying moments brings this home: Biff is free. I'm not often moved to tears, but McBeath and Frazer had me struggling to hold them back.

Not free at all is Biff's brother Happy (Kevin K. James). He's as deluded as Willy and still believes charisma trumps action. In the flashbacks, James is boyish and anxious to please his father: "Look at me, Pop, look at me." As an adult, he's creepily like Willy.

Donna Belleville makes her Playhouse debut as Linda. It's a splendid performance--her character always deferring to Willy in the early scenes but finding fury enough later on when she turns on Biff and Happy after they pick up a couple of floozies, abandoning their father in an upscale restaurant.

Flawless support is given by Daniel Arnold, Norman Browning, Anna Cummer, Sean Devine, Genevieve Fleming, Eric Keenleyside, Jamieson Parker and Dawn Petten.

To those who claim this or that second-rate play is the best play of the 20th century, I say plays such as Death of a Salesman and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (running concurrently at the Arts Club Granville Island Stage) are the gold standard. See them back-to-back and fill your boots.

joled@telus.net