‘DEATH OF A SALESMAN’: (left to right) Sharon D. Clarke, Wendell Pierce & André De Shields. Photo: Joan Marcus.

DEATH OF A SALESMAN
Written by Arthur Miller
Directed by Miranda Cromwell
Through January 15, 2023
Hudson Theatre
141 West 44th Street

(855-801-5876), www.SalesmanOnBroadway.com

By David NouNou

Death of a Salesman exists in two worlds, that of delusion (Willy Loman and his two sons, Biff and Happy) and denial (Linda Loman, his wife). Willy lives mostly in the faded past of imagined glory and his halcyon days as a salesman (real or imagined), but Linda is always grounded in the present and reality. Her denial is rooted in her deep love and devotion to Willy.

Set in 1949, Willy (Wendell Pierce) has returned home unexpectedly from a trip he was supposed to make to Boston and couldn’t make it past Yonkers. Willy has been working as a salesman for his company for 36 years. He is tired and spent. He now talks to himself a lot and lives with the ghosts of his past. He can’t seem to make those long hauls to New England to sell his wares; instead, he gets into accidents because of his wandering mind. His salary has been cut and he lives on commission. His friend and next-door neighbor, Charley (Delaney Williams), provides him with $50 a week to help pay off the mortgage on his home and the premium on his life insurance. Willy is a broken man and lives with his demons and fantasies of the American dream and success. Success comes to everyone around him but not to Willy or his family. Even his sons, both of whom were his prized treasures, have turned out to be wastrels and failures.

Linda (Sharon D. Clarke) is his long-suffering wife who has always stood by Willy and buoyed him to keep moving forward. She has never made him feel like a failure.

The boys: Biff, now 34 (Khris Davis), was a football star in high school and had a lot of hot air blown into him by his father, but has been a failure at everything since he was 17 and dropped out of school due to his father’s indiscretion on the road. Biff has just come back home from working in a farm in Nebraska. Happy, the younger son who worshiped Biff (McKinley Belcher III), has a lot of pipe dreams of his own and lies to and about himself.

This is a beautifully textured play that Arthur Miller wrote about the downfall of all the Willys/salesmen  who had dreams that didn’t come to fruition. It has at least 15 universal themes interwoven throughout. It has been 73 years since this play first opened and it is still as relevant today, if not more so than in 1949. Because the pressures of life have gotten harder, and we still live in life’s turmoils—ageism, losing jobs, paying bills, fear of failure, life’s disappointments and missed opportunities. The only way to do justice to this play is to cast it perfectly and direct it in a seamless manner, as Mike Nichols did in 2012 with Philip Seymour Hoffman; as Robert Falls did in 1999 with Brian Dennehy; and as George C. Scott did in 1975, directing himself. No extemporaneous business or gimmicks are needed. Just perform the play.

Starting with the good, God bless Sharon D. Clarke, because she is the only person that comes across the stage in blazing glory. She is grounded in reality and has the depth of Linda Loman’s duality. She knows Willy’s failures but would never betray him by admitting them to anyone. She loves her sons but will not stand for one bad remark made about Willy. She would rather throw them out from the house than to see Willy hurt. She is the heart and soul of the play. Wait until she recites “Attention must be paid to such a man…” It breaks your heart.

The problems that have risen in this production stem from directorial viewpoints and the choices made. Directors now are taking more risks and liberties to bring new but often misguided visions to established masterpieces. Just look at the abysmal choices Diane Paulus made with the current revival of 1776, and now Miranda Cromwell has inserted so many needless extras, that she dilutes the piece, and her direction, from Willy to the boys, is all over the place.

When Willy walks in, we know he is a tired salesman, and his prospects are dim. But as played by Mr. Pierce, we don’t see him so much as tired but of someone who is losing his mind and hallucinating. He is brash, bombastic and a blowhard. There is no descent to the man. He is a loser from the start. He is a man who lives on dreams and blows smoke into his sons and they in turn are failures like him. Mr. Pierce doesn’t imbue Willy with any shadings; he’s bombastic throughout the show and there is no progression or arc to his character.

Biff and Happy never talk to each other; they’re always either whining or screaming with each other about their differences, gripes, and about their father. This is where a strong director steps in to modulate performances for all three men and to give their characters dimension and let the audience ultimately figure out they are losers and not know this from the onset.

There is also Ben Loman (André De Shields), Willy’s much older brother. He left Willy when he was very young. Ben went into the jungle at 17 and came out a millionaire at 21. Mr. De Shields is a theatrical treasure. He is almost in the same costume and character as Hermes, messenger from the Gods, from Hadestown. Thankfully, he seems to be yet again the messenger from the Gods. But who cares? He can walk across the stage with his glitz and we are dazzled by him.

Ms. Cromwell is not helped at all by her set designer, Anna Fleischle. Last year she did a brilliant job with Martin MacDonagh’s Hangmen. Here the space compendium is nonexistent. In a crucial scene in Act I where Willy is having one of his breakdowns with Linda, young Biff, Happy, Willy’s mistress and others, scenes shift from the Loman’s backyard to Boston. The scene is so confusing from what is past and what is present and where are these scenes taking place. In another instance in Act II, when Biff calls his mother to tell her about dinner with dad, the phone rings, Linda picks up the phone in the living room, and a TV monitor at a bar turns on and, in squawky cartoon sounds, Biff is talking to Linda while she is instructing him to behave well with his dad. Someone has to explain how that absurd idea came to be.

Laughs are not a staple in Death of a Salesman. However, Ms. Cromwell felt that comic relief was needed in the form of Willy coming across as a blustering Ralph Kramden from “The Honeymooners” on a bad day.

Let’s just say thank you to Sharon D. Clarke and may she reign supreme on Broadway for years to come in better Broadway productions. The woman is the bravest Linda Loman I have ever seen on the stage.

Edited by Scott Harrah
Published October 13, 2022
Reviewed at October 12, 2022 press performance.

‘DEATH OF A SALESMAN’: The cast. Photo: Joan Marcus.

‘DEATH OF A SALESMAN’: Wendell Pierce & Sharon D. Clarke. Photo: Joan Marcus.

‘DEATH OF A SALESMAN’: Blake De Long & Wendell Pierce. Photo: Joan Marcus.

‘DEATH OF A SALESMAN’: McKinley Belcher III, Wendell Pierce & Khris Davis. Photo: Joan Marcus.

‘DEATH OF A SALESMAN’: (left to right) Khris Davis, (top left) Wendell Pierce, Sharon D. Clarke & McKinley Belcher III. Photo: Joan Marcus.

‘DEATH OF A SALESMAN’: (left to right) Sharon D. Clarke, Wendell Pierce & Khris Davis. Photo: Joan Marcus.

‘DEATH OF A SALESMAN’: Wendell Pierce. Photo: Joan Marcus.

‘DEATH OF A SALESMAN’: Sharon D. Clarke. Photo: Joan Marcus.

‘DEATH OF A SALESMAN’: André De Shields. Photo: Joan Marcus.

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‘COMPANY’: Katrina Lenk. Photo: Matthew Murphy.

COMPANY
Music & lyrics by Stephen Sondheim
Book by George Furth
Directed by Marianne Elliott
Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre
242 West 45th Street
(212-239-6200), https://companymusical.com/

By Scott Harrah

The latest Company revival could drive a critic (and purists) crazy with British director Marianne Elliott’s new, often confusing and very European spin on this masterpiece that has never needed tampering. Why?  It is the quintessential New York musical, a show renowned for its simplicity, sophistication and gorgeous score, featuring classics like “Being Alive,” “The Ladies Who Lunch,” “You Could Drive a Person Crazy,” “Another Hundred People,” “Getting Married Today” and others.  What’s offered here is a 21^st century perspective to dust off the narrative cobwebs and dated dialogue and make it relevant in 2021, but the score by Stephen Sondheim (who died last month) is so timeless that there was no need for a major overhaul here   More than 50 years have passed since Company first premiered on Broadway but much of the overall premise of the show rings true today.  Manhattan is still a maddening, overcrowded insane world with millions of people, and it’s still so easy to feel alone when you’re single.  This is certainly one of Mr. Sondheim’s greatest works, if not the best.  George Furth’s original book was—dare I say it?—ahead of its time back in 1970 when Company premiered on Broadway.  Many aspects of the show—tiny Manhattan apartments, expectations about getting married, the hustle and bustle of the New York City subway—are still relevant today.  Company is both an all-American musical and a paean to New York City, but Ms. Elliott’s interpretation (a hit in 2018 in London) has diminished many of the charms of the original show.

Director Marianne Elliott’s biggest change to the story is swapping the gender of lead character Bobby. Tony Award winner Katrina Lenk (The Band’s Visit) plays Bobbie, a single Manhattan woman celebrating her 35^th birthday.  Ms. Lenk has a great voice and an effervescent stage presence, but she appears too bland and emotionally distant for audiences to root for her, and this is problematic since the original Bobby was always the least interesting character in Company.

Marianne Elliott did such a superb job with the 2018 Broadway revival of Angels in America and the 2014 British import The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, so it is disappointing that she has added too much European-style excess here, from a scene showing Bobbie in the rain to various characters running through Bobbie’s bedroom during the “Barcelona” number in act two.  The last revival in 2006, starring Raul Julia as Bobby, was also very minimalist and featured gimmicky touches from another British director, John Doyle.  Remember how John Doyle had the actors play instruments onstage in the revival of Company and, in 2005, Sweeney Todd?  One of the changes that truly works is changing a straight couple to a gay couple. The character of Jamie (originally Amy) is played with manic exuberance by Matt Doyle as a gay man about to marry his partner Paul (Etai Benson).  Mr. Doyle truly stops the show with his outstanding rendition of “Getting Married Today.”  He displays all the nervous emotions of wedding-day jitters that both men and women, straight or gay, can relate to, and Mr. Doyle should certainly be a front-runner for a Tony Award in a few months.

Another standout is Tony nominee Jennifer Simard as Sarah, the diet-crazed woman married to recovering alcoholic Harry (Christopher Sieber).  Fans of Patti LuPone will not be disappointed with her take on the glamorous, acid-tongued Joanne, Bobbie’s oldest and dearest friend who loves to talk about her many husbands.  Ms. LuPone is her usual over-the-top self, belting out one of the show’s most famous songs, “The Ladies Who Lunch,” with her famous tough-diva pipes.

Scenic designer Bunny Christie mostly fills the stage with Neon-lit boxes and Mylar balloons in an attempt to make the show more contemporary, but doing so takes away some of the show’s New York accent.  Anyone who has at least studied the 1970 original remembers the set was actually a character in the show. Walter Kerr wrote in his 1970 New York Times review that the set by Boris Aronson “at first looks like the prison setting for ‘The Last Mile’ [but] becomes a breath-taking mobile, an interlocked Tinker-Toy of rippling platforms, sighing elevators, spun-glass spindles for dances to chin themselves on.”  In this revival, the set designs look nothing like New York City and could be Anywhere, USA.

Despite this revival’s many shortcomings, it is worth seeing Company simply for the score resurrected one more time to truly appreciate the late, great Mr. Sondheim and hear all the beautiful songs by the last of the great Broadway songsmiths.

Edited by David NouNou
Published December 12, 2021
Reviewed at December 11, 2021 press performance.

‘COMPANY’: (left to right) Christopher Sieber, Jennifer Simard, Katrina Lenk & Patti LuPone. Photo: Matthew Murphy.

‘COMPANY’: (left to right) Claybourne Elder, Manu Narayan, Bobby Conte. Photo: Matthew Murphy.

‘COMPANY’: Katrina Lenk & Claybourne Elder. Photo: Matthew Murphy.

‘COMPANY’: (left to right) Rashidra Scott, Katrina Lenk & Greg Hildreth. Photo: Brinkhoff-Moegenbur.

‘COMPANY’: Matt Doyle. Photo: Matthew Murphy.

‘COMPANY’: Katrina Lenk. Photo: Brinkhoff-Moegenburg.

‘COMPANY’: The cast. Photo: Matthew Murphy.

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‘ANGELS IN AMERICA-PERESTROIKA’: Nathan Lane, giving the performance of his career. Photo: Brinkhoff Mogenburg

ANGELS IN AMERICA: PART 1, MILLENNIUM APPROACHES & PART 2, PERESTROIKA
A GAY FANTASIA ON NATIONAL THEMES
By Tony Kushner
Directed by Marianne Elliott
Neil Simon Theatre
250 West 52nd Street
877-598-0955, https://angelsbroadway.com/

By Scott Harrah

There are two main reasons to see this revival of Tony Kushner’s classic two-part AIDS epic, Angels in America, Millennium Approaches and Perestroika. The first part is a masterpiece and one of the most provocative American plays of all time. Finally, the cast is superb and many of the performances are among the best in the past decade.

Both plays can be either seen in two parts on two separate evenings or on “marathon” days, when both Part 1, Millennium Approaches and Part 2, Perestroika are shown consecutively in repertory in the matinee and evening performances, at a total running time of nearly eight hours, with two intermissions in each part. If you decide to see only one part, Millennium Approaches is the better of the two because it is a seamless depiction of the early days of the AIDS pandemic. Mr. Kushner’s intricately constructed play is a heartbreaking visit back to that dark period for gay men in 1980s America, particularly poignant for those of us who lived through it, and of rich and important historical value for younger audience members who have never known someone who died of AIDS.

Millennium Approaches revolves around the stories of gay couple Louis Ironson (James McArdle) and his lover Prior Walter (Andrew Garfield), who is dying of AIDS; and “straight” couple Joe Pitt (Lee Pace), a Mormon lawyer, and his wife Harper (Denise Gough), a pill-popping housewife. Prior tells Louis he has AIDS, but Louis isn’t able to deal with having a sick lover. Roy Cohn (Nathan Lane), a right-wing lawyer, offers Joe a job in the Justice Department in Washington. However, Joe’s wife Harper, suffering from anxiety and hallucinations and a growing dependence on Valium, does not want to move to Washington.

Joe finds Louis crying in the men’s room one day and this is where the two couples’ lives start to intertwine. The two men begin a friendship, partially because Louis suspects Joe might be gay. In a dream sequence, Harper and Prior meet and she reveals that her husband is a closeted homosexual. She later confronts Joe but he denies being gay.

Meanwhile, Roy receives shocking news from his doctor. The doctor diagnoses Roy as having AIDS. Roy considers gay men weak and refuses to accept that he has AIDS, a “gay” disease. Roy says he will tell people he has “liver cancer,” but his doctor insists his efforts would be better spent acquiring an experimental AIDS drug.

The plot is complicated and has the feel of a classic Greek tragedy, with all of Harper’s hallucinogenic scenes and Roy being visited by the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg (Susan Brown), the American woman he helped put to death based on allegations of Communism and “treason” back in the 1950s.

While Louis shuns his lover and seeks anonymous late-night sex in Central Park, Prior finds some comfort and compassion from his nurse, Belize (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett). Sexual tension grows between Louis and Joe, and Joe eventually makes a surprising revelation to his mother Hannah (Ms. Brown in a dual role) back in Salt Lake City.

Part One ends with a cliffhanger, which anyone familiar with the story already knows (so discussing it is not exactly a spoiler). Prior, growing increasingly ill, has a prophetic vision when an Angel (Amanda Lawrence) crashes through the roof of his apartment and ominously says, “The Great Work begins.”

Part One is a carefully constructed work. However, Part 2, Perestroika, is a much weaker and disappointing show. Harper is hallucinating wildly, imagining she is in Antarctica, but she’s really in Prospect Park, Brooklyn and gets picked up by cops. Joe is not around, but his mother Hannah arrives in New York and takes Harper in, offering her a chance to visit her at the Mormon Visitor’s Center. Hannah is volunteering there.

Roy Cohn grows sicker and is admitted to the hospital where Belize works. Roy starts off making horribly racist comments to the nurse, yet Belize, ever the professional, takes the proverbial high road and offers the dying lawyer advice on his treatment. Later, Prior tells Belize about the Angel.

It is at this point that making sense of Perestroika gets challenging, as the narrative becomes more convoluted. The Angel gives Prior a prophetic book and explains that God abandoned the Angels in Heaven after the San Francisco earthquake in 1906, and they believe they are powered by human sexual activity. Prior is now horrified by the Angel and tries to avoid her.

What makes the story so compelling, in addition to the dark subject matter about how AIDS affected so many, is the skillful way playwright Tony Kushner makes the lives of the characters intersect.

Director Marianne Elliott certainly puts a new spin on Angels in America, but her directorial choices may not please purists familiar with the original production. However, two actors give performances that are first-rate in every sense and help make this a “must-see” revival regardless.

British actress Susan Brown is simply incandescent in her multiple roles, whether she’s playing a rabbi, Hannah the Mormon mother or the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg. Her hospital scene after Roy Cohn’s death, in which Ethel’s ghost recites the mourner’s Kaddish in Hebrew, is truly haunting and eerily touching. Her interpretation of Hannah, the woman torn between her Mormon faith and compassion for her son and Prior grappling with his illness and the Angel, is consistently outstanding and rings with truth.

Andrew Garfield as Prior gives a fine performance, as does Nathan Stewart-Jarrett as the nurse Belize (although he is perhaps a bit too camp in places), and Lee Pace as Joe is superb, but Nathan Lane as Roy Cohn overshadows everyone. New York theatergoers have seen Mr. Lane many times before, but never like this. He is absolutely riveting every moment he is onstage, displaying all the hatred and rage and self-loathing of the Roy Cohn character. Toward the end of Roy’s life, as he is dying in a hospital bed, convulsing as he goes in and out of seizures, Mr. Lane’s interpretation is nothing less than awe-inspiring. This is, without question, the virtuoso stage performance of Nathan Lane’s career.

The original production featured the Angel with realistic-looking traditional wings, but in this revival the Angel, as conceived by puppet designers Finn Cardwell and Nick Barnes, looks more like Rodan, with the wingspan of a 747, about to destroy Tokyo in one of those old Godzilla movies. In addition, six actors alternate playing “Angel Shadows” to hold up the “wings.” The result is silly and distracting and adds nothing to the show. Puppetry may have worked for director Marianne Elliott in War Horse, with its gorgeous horse creations, but this new angle on angel wings just reeks of hubris and pretension here. As the adage goes “less is more,” and that is certainly the case here in an epic saga that is already so complicated, but there is no doubt this revival is a memorable one and should attract new generations of Tony Kushner fans, and will be talked about for many years.

Edited by Scott Harrah
Published March 25, 2018
Reviewed at March 17, 2018 preview performance.

‘ANGELS IN AMERICA-PERESTROIKA’: Beth Malone & the ‘Angel Shadows’ (in dark costumes). Photo: Brinkhoff Mogenburg

‘ANGELS IN AMERICA-MILLENNIUM APPROACHES’: Andrew Garfield & Nathan Stewart-Jarrett. Photo: Brinkhoff Mogenburg

‘ANGELS IN AMERICA-MILLENNIUM APPROACHES’: James McArdle & Nathan Stewart-Jarrett. Photo: Brinkhoff Mogenburg

‘ANGELS IN AMERICA-MILLENNIUM APPROACHES’. Lee Pace. Photo: Brinkhoff Mogenburg

‘ANGELS IN AMERICA-PERESTROIKA’: Susan Brown as Ethel Rosenberg. Photo: Brinkhoff Mogenburg

‘ANGELS IN AMERICA-PERESTROIKA’: James McArdle & Lee Pace. Photo: Brinkhoff Mogenburg

‘ANGELS IN AMERICA-MILLENNIUM APPROACHES’: Nathan Lane & Susan Brown. Photo: Brinkhoff Mogenburg

‘ANGELS IN AMERICA-PERESTROIKA’: Nathan Lane & Nathan Stewart-Jarrett. Photo: Brinkhoff Mogenburg

‘ANGELS IN AMERICA-MILLENNIUM APPROACHES’: Nathan Stewart-Jarrett & Denise Gough. Photo: Brinkhoff Mogenburg

‘ANGELS IN AMERICA-MILLENNIUM APPROACHES’: Susan Brown. Photo: Brinkhoff Mogenburg

‘ANGELS IN AMERICA-PERESTROIKA’: (Front) Andrew Garfield & (back) James McArdle, Susan Brown & Nathan Stewart-Jarrett. Photo: Brinkhoff Mogenburg

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PERFORMANCE OF THE SEASON: Alex Sharp is brilliant in ‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.’. Photo: Joan Marcus

THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME
Written by Simon Stephens
Based on the novel by Mark Haddon
Directed by Marianne Elliott
Barrymore Theatre
248 W. 47th Street
(212-239-6200), www.curiousonbroadway.com

 By Scott Harrah

Over the past decade, there have been very few truly great stage dramas. The History Boys, August: Osage County and now, direct from the United Kingdom, add The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time to the preeminent list.

This explosive story demonstrates that great original theater— the type that overwhelms the senses and restores one’s faith in quality, live entertainment that actually says something— is definitely possible. Based on Mark Haddon’s eponymous 2003 bestseller, the story starts out with a proverbial bang and, for the most part, never lets up. Christopher Boone (the outstanding Alex Sharp) is a troubled 15-year-old in suburban England. As the play opens, we see that a big, furry dog named Wellington has been brutally murdered with a pitchfork. Christopher desperately tells the dog’s owner, Mrs. Shears (Mercedes Herrero) that he didn’t kill Wellington, but she still calls the police.

What follows is a series of disturbing events, all of which take the audience on a theatrical roller-coaster ride. Everything is shown from the perspective of this scared young lad, moving from an English garden to a train station to fast-paced London. The boy is determined to find the dog’s killer, but this proves to be no simple task because Christopher isn’t your average teen. Although it is never clarified, he has all the signs of Asberger’s syndrome or autism, for he has trouble communicating, screams if anyone touches him, but yet he is a genius at mathematics.

The Curious Incident is a rare blend of traditional and experimental theatrics and high-tech special effects, adapted by Simon Stephens, along with painstaking direction by Marianne Elliott (War Horse), and innovative scenic and costume design by Bunny Christie, lighting design by Paule Constable and video design by Finn Ross. Yes, the scenic and technical designers are as much the stars of the show as the actors because we are treated to a visual feast of everything from starry skies and geometric patterns to a pulse-churning scene on the rails of a London Underground station, using projections, eerie music and lighting on an ever-evolving set.

Gimmicky? Not really, because all the technical wizardry gels beautifully with the storyline, fleshed out by 15 actors, some playing multiple roles. Because the lead is so demanding, Taylor Trensch plays Christopher at certain performances.

Beneath the flashy phantasmagoria before us is a solid narrative, with a cast giving their all, for at its core, The Curious Incident is a story about a boy’s rocky relationship with his complicated parents. Of particular note are Ian Barford as Christopher’s caring father, Ed; Francesca Faridany as his bighearted teacher, Siobhan; and Helen Carey as the kind, elderly neighbor lady that offers him cake and orangeade and tries to be his friend.

Perhaps there’s a little bit of Christopher Boone in all of us: Facing life’s daily battles, having to be brave, uncertain of what lies ahead. It is the ingenious depiction of these very human emotions that makes The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time so heartbreakingly real, touching and exhilarating, and unlike any drama Broadway has seen (or will likely see) in many years.

AN ILLUMINATING THEATRICAL EXPERIENCE: (left to right): Helen Carey, Mercedes Herrero, Alex Sharp (kneeling), Richard Hollis, David Manis & Ben Horner in ‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.’ Photo: Joan Marcus

FLYING HIGH: (left to right) Mercedes Herrero, Alex Sharp (above), Richard Hollis & Jocelyn Bioh. Photo: Joan Marcus

Edited by Scott Harrah
Published October 10, 2014
Reviewed at press performance on October 9, 2014

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