It’s a gesture easy to miss, but in one startling moment, he physically shoves his wife when she tries to reason with him. Pierce goes so far as to make Willy so obsessed with his distorted values that he even seems capable of violence, something you don’t see in most contemporary performances, which invariably stress the pathos of his delusional worship of success. Under the careful direction of Miranda Cromwell, Pierce sensitively scrutinizes this deluded man’s foolish worship of the American Dream, which he narrowly interprets as material success. Pierce portrays Willy as a hero for both his time and ours - a complex human being with grave character flaws, but “a good man” for all that. In the postwar America they knew in 1948, Miller’s protagonist seemed almost anti-American.īut as this production from the Young Vic Theatre in London reminds us, Arthur Miller’s 1949 drama packs a mighty punch. It’s worth remembering that back when Arthur Miller’s now-celebrated American tragedy originally opened on Broadway, many people were unsettled by the floundering character of Willy. And who knows what other, future interpreters might find in the character. There’s no doubt that casting a Black actor as Willy Loman (for the first time on Broadway, no less) adds a deeper dimension to this monumental role.
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