Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman is without doubt among the greatest 20th century works of American drama, so new revivals are always hotly anticipated. Director Tristan Fynn-Aiduenu promises a reimagining that will be a ‘one-of-a-kind’ in his new production for the Everyman, so what has he brought to the play that gives it that Everyman ‘edge’?
Firstly, despite some quite bold amendments, audiences familiar with the text will certainly not find anything missing from it. What Fynn-Aiduenu has done is to find his own personal inspiration to inform the characters in the play. Miller was never clear about the ethnicity or background of the titular salesman Willy Loman, although it has often been assumed that he was of Jewish heritage. This gives Fynn-Aiduenu a thread to pick up, in reading the family as first and second generation immigrants, and he capitalises on the fact that both Brooklyn, where the play is set, and Liverpool, where it is being performed, have a long history of both African and Irish communities, which offers the opportunity for the director to tap directly into his own family’s experience of the expectations of what success might look like. He is very clear about not wanting to simply ‘season’ the play by adding black actors to his cast, but to place this at the centre of what is driving them.
It is worth making a brief comparison with Sarah Frankom’s 2018 Royal Exchange production which placed Don Warrington in the lead. That was certainly a fine reading, but what Fynn-Aiduenu achieves here is a far more effective immersion of his characters in their heritage, and it is much more than a mere directorial concept.
So it is that Cyril Nri becomes the washed-up salesman whose final 24 hours are spent in contemplation of his life. Not only have his expectations for himself failed to live up to whatever nebulous notion he had of ‘success’, but his sons Happy and Biff have not provided him with the legacy that he was hoping for. The entire of Millers narrative is suffused with Willy’s mounting sense of failure, despite the fact that he has never been realistic with himself about what would constitute success.
Nri gives a powerful central performance here, switching with ease between the present time and the frequent passages of memory. His Irish-American wife is played by Emma Cater, who captures the mixture of exasperation and affection that she has for him with warm but weary realism, although her character is not explored in as much depth as in some other productions.
Kiren Kebaili-Dwyer and Laurence Ubong Williams are a fine pairing as Happy and Biff. There is a believable air of sibling rivalry and conspiracy about them, and their interactions with Willy, both in the present and the remembered past are delicately balanced. They are far from foils to their father though, and both flesh out the characters in impressive performances. Meanwhile Tayo Aluko is splendidly spectral as the ghostly figure of Willy’s late brother Ben, while Joe Speare provides a strong sounding board for Willy as the friendly neighbour Charley.
If Linda is something of a second fiddle to Willy, this reading casts ‘The Woman’, Willy’s extramarital affair who we meet in the world inside his head, very much as the principal flute. Adelaide Banks as The Woman brings the play’s famous passages of flute music into play as visual as well as audible cues. Playing both a modern flute and a more traditional African instrument, she drifts in and out of scenes in a mask that possibly symbolises the Sankofa bird, which in Ghanaian tradition represents learning from the past. It also seems to nod towards Fynn-Aiduenu’s liking for Greek drama.
This mystical musical device is used alongside subtle shifts of lighting to clearly signpost the pulling back and forth of the timelines, and the unreality of the memory sequences are grounded in Georgia Wilmot’s set, which is strikingly faithful to Miller’s original stage directions in its multiple levels, partially absent walls, and towering apartment blocks to the rear. This realism, and the clear 1940s period are oddly subverted by the appearance of a handful of very deliberate but perplexing modern props, including a shiny white laptop, which injected some laughter but remained something of a mystery.
Miller subtitled his play ‘Certain private conversations in two acts and a requiem’, and that requiem offers Fynn-Aiduenu his final opportunity to assert the cultural setting of the production in an atmospheric and visually striking closing tableau.
This is a strong reading of Miller’s classic text which succeeds in making sense of many of the play’s problematic themes and timeshifts with a fresh and imaginative approach.
Death of a Salesman plays at Liverpool Everyman until 10th October, with tickets available here.
Star rating: 4 stars
Production images by Ali Wright
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| Cyril Nri as Willy Loman |
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| Laurence Ubong Williams, Cyril Nri and Kiren Kebaili-Dwyer as Biff, Willy and Happy |
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| Emma Cater and Cyril Nri as Linda and Willy |
This review was originally written for publication by Good News Liverpool
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