The Pavilion, Glasgow
Four stars
American dreams don’t come much more broken in Arthur Miller’s slow burning 1949 tragedy, brought to life here in Andy Arnold’s mighty production, led by a towering performance from David Hayman at its centre.
Hayman is Willy Loman, the veteran salesman as past his sell by date as some of the wares he’s been hawking for more years than he can remember. Where once he was apparently a hot shot, charming the buyers in Boston and beyond, now he can barely earn enough to pay off all the things he and his wife Linda have bought into. This built in obsolescence of a clapped out fridge and other domestic goods becomes a symbol of the ruthless disposability of consumer capitalism. Willy may be over the hill, but next year’s model will be along any second.
Throw in the terminal underachievement of Willy and his wife Linda’s two sons, Happy and Biff, the missed opportunities with his brother Ben, and the guilt of being caught out in a hotel room betrayal, no wonder Willy is on the verge of cracking up.
With Arnold’s cast lined up either side of the stage throughout when they’re not performing, Hayman shuffles on to Neil Haynes’ spare set laden with suitcases that suggests Willy is carrying the weight of the world. This sets in motion a heartbreaking fable that is as vital now as it was when Miller first wrote it.
Hayman’s Willy is a broken and not always likeable remnant of the mythical old days who has long lost his big talking swagger. For all his flaws, he is only trying to survive in an increasingly ruthless world. Willy is the ultimate little guy, a self made terrier who rides the boom years before everything goes bust while all about him seem to be making the big time. Ultimately, as is made plain by the haunted expression on Hayman’s face, he is one of life’s everyday losers.
Beth Marshall’s Linda is a heartbreaking study in familial devotion no matter what. As their sons, Michael Wallace as Happy and especially Daniel Cahill as Biff seem to tower above their old man, even as they play disappointed also-rans looking for a break in a man’s world.
As Willy’s past catches up with him in his ageing mind throughout this co-production between Trafalgar Theatre Productions and Raw Material, these scenes are punctuated by Niroshini Thambar’s woozy flute and fiddle led dreamscape played live.
Following on from the Tron Theatre’s production of A View from the Bridge, it is a thrill to see such big grown up plays on Scotland’s stages. It doesn’t happen enough. What we’re left with here is a story of failed potential, bad decisions, lost faculties and how those surplus to the requirements of a faster and more profitable age are thrown on the scrap heap in a devastating depiction of how a broken system destroys the weakest.
ends
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