Death of a Salesman

Attention must be paid.

In the program notes for the Denver Center Theatre Company's production of Death of a Salesman (through October 20 in the Space Theatre), Dan Sullivan suggests that putting Arthur Miller's signature work on a pedestal is to disrespect it because he fears that when a play is a classic, callow youth will not take interest or pay attention. Perhaps Mr. Sullivan has been in the criticism game a little too long, as he seems to have forgotten that callow youth are not to be catered to by serious artists, or by critics who are judging a work's place in the canon. And in the canon of 20th century American theatre, Death of a Salesman stands astride the earth as a colossus (a metaphor I deploy with full knowledge of its irony). If callow youth choose not to pay attention, it's their loss.

Watching the DCTC production last week, I had a hard time judging the quality of the production. Dustin Hoffman is my generation's Willy Loman, and I never quite adjusted my expectations to Mike Hartman's lanky figure; which is not to say his performance was lacking. With the rest of the cast, he hit all the notes just right. I want to say the script is so perfect it couldn't be botched up, but anyone who's spent more than one evening at the theatre knows that anything can be ruined by a sufficiently dedicated incompetent. Linda Klein was a fine Linda, but John Hutton was notable for the gravity he brought to the mythic figure of Willy's older brother Ben. As Biff, John Patrick Hayden anchored the second act with a compelling distress which never descended into hysteria. Attention must also be paid to Michael Santo's pitch-perfect rendition of Charley.

Speaking of the second act, Theatre Companion and I could not help noticing murmuring among the audience as certain members realized Willy Loman's suicide was imminent. Seriously? What adult who can afford to buy a ticket to a professional production doesn't know how Death of a Salesman turns out? Because Dan Sullivan notwithstanding, it is a classic, one to which callow youth do well to pay attention. I was as callow as they come when I watched Dustin Hoffman's Willy struggle with John Malkovich's Biff back in 1985, but I was profoundly affected. It's probably been a couple decades since I last visited the script, so I was pleasantly surprised by the dialogue's naturalism and versimilitude. One of the benefits of live theatre is the ear catches things the eye misses when reading a script, and I was struck by how many characters call Willy Loman "kid" in the second act (always in a completely unaffected manner), one of Miller's more suble indicators of Willy's diminishment in the world around him. Of course, that easy facility with dialogue and subtext is part of the reason this is a classic: plenty of self-conscious serious works have failed to leave any impression because they failed to capture any sense of real human beings living real lives.

I love Death of a Salesman for many of the reasons which make it such a landmark in the canon. I love Arthur Miller for sticking it to Aristotle and all the other hide-bound traditionalists by making a man of common birth ("Loman" ["low man"] being a fairly obvious indicator) a tragic hero. Now that I am not such a youth (my callowness being a subject for discussion at a date to be indefinitely postponed), this reacquaintance caused me to reconsider the nature of Willy Loman's tragedy. I used to think Miller was telling us to pay attention to the common man, the low man who had led a life of productive work even if he had nothing to show for it at its end. I used to think Willy Loman was a tragic victim of the capitalist system and employers indifferent to a lifetime of service.

Now, deep in the throes of middle age, I realize Arthur Miller is a far better playwright than that. Willy Loman is a fool, a man who claims to be well-liked but knows he is not, a man who claims a noble character for himself and his sons which is radically at odds with the petty one he has created, a self-proclaimed family man who cheats on his wife and consequently crushes the spirit and all the youthful potential of his eldest son. Willy Loman does not fall victim to invincible and cruelly indifferent external forces: he boxes himself into his ignoble end by a lifetime of ignoble choices.

Arthur Miller recognizes this hubris for what it is, and tells us this, therefore, is a tragic hero, to whom attention must be paid. Miller reminds me, once again,  why I love the stage and the screen and books, and also of the necessity of the humanities. The humanities, especially the arts, are necessary because they recall to our attention the human, the human person before us. Willy Loman cannot be admired or held up for imitation, but he is a human being. As such, he has an inherent dignity: although he doesn't know it, he bears the image of his Creator and, for that reason alone, is worthy of a major play and is worthy of our attention.

Attention must be paid to such a man. To not pay attention is to deny our humanity and, perhaps, to deny our faith.