Though the author's condemnation of the American success ethic is stated baldly, it is also woven, at times humorously, into the action. Miseries with past traumas and drawing blood almost everywhere it goes. Even as his play marches steadily onward to its preordained conclusion, it roams about through time and space, connecting present Miller wrote with a fierce, liberating urgency. Yet how small and academic these quibbles look when set against the fact of the thunderous thing itself. We know its flaws by heart - the big secret withheld from the audience until Act II, and the symbolic old brother Ben (Louis Zorich), forever championing the Americanĭream in literary prose. Has been clouded by the author's subsequent career. Miller's masterwork has been picked to death by critics over the last 35 years, and its reputation On his father's chest, the whole audience leans forward to be folded into the embrace: we know we're watching the salesman arrive, however temporarily, at the only safe harbor he'll ever know.īut as much as we marvel at the acting in this ''Death of a Salesman,'' we also marvel at the play. When Biff finally forgives Willy and nestles his head lovingly John Malkovich, who plays the lost Biff, gives a performance of such spellbinding effect that he becomes the evening's anchor. Under the balanced direction of Michael Rudman, this revival is an exceptional ensemble effort, What's more, the star has not turned ''Death of a Salesman'' into a vehicle.
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Hoffman's follow- through falls short of his characterization - it takes a good while to accept him as 63 years old - we're riveted by the wasted vitality of his small Willy, a man full of fight forĪll the wrong battles. Willy rides to suicide, as he rode through life, on the foolish, empty pride of ''a smile and a shoeshine.''Įven when Mr. His bouncy final exit is theĭeath of a salesman, all right. Hoffman's Willy becomes a harrowing American everyman. And by staking no claim to the stature of a tragic hero, Mr. Hoffman is not playing a larger-than-life protagonist but the small man described in the script - the ''little boat looking for a harbor,'' the eternally adolescentĪmerican male who goes to the grave without ever learning who he is. In undertaking one of our theater's classic roles, this daring actor has pursued his ownīrilliant conception of the character. To reconcile these sides of Willy - the brave fighter and the whipped child - you really have no choice but to see what Mr. The price quoted by Biff may, if anything, be too high. Hoffman rants, looking and sounding so small that we fear The actor sitting in the straightback chair of his kitchen, crying out in rage to his elder son, Biff.
Hoffman's Willy has collapsed to the floor of a Broadway steakhouse, mewling and shrieking like an abandoned baby. His final exit - and with what has come before? Earlier, Mr. But how does one square that feisty image with what will come after His fist is raised and his face is cocked defiantly upwards, so that his rimless spectacles glint in the Brooklyn moonlight. S Willy Loman in Arthur Miller's ''Death of a Salesman,'' Dustin Hoffman doesn't trudge heavily Hoffman, 'Death of Salesman' By FRANK RICH
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