‘Death of a Salesman’ Broadway review: So-so revival lacks fire

There are more tricks than exciting drama in the most recent revival of “Death of a Salesman,” which opened Sunday night on Broadway.

Jazz music often underscores and pacifies the motion, and characters will sing out their pain, needlessly, after delivering a number of the most famous monologues ever written.

The stage is bathed in dreamy purples and blues, looking more like Tennessee Williams’ memory play “The Glass Menagerie” than the craggy tale of Arthur Miller’s Willy Loman. 

And in scenes that briefly whisk us to a more promising past, there are shiny, rapid-fire camera clicks that take the word “flashback” a tad too literally.

None of those add-ons refresh or galvanize the story — they sedate it like theatrical Xanax. 

Revivals should shake things up (though the 2012 revival starring Philip Seymour Hoffman reused Jo Mielziner’s famous original set to great acclaim), but in director Miranda Cromwell’s production from London they contribute an animatronic, distant quality to what could be a profoundly moving and reliably relatable play.

The pieces don’t connect, and neither will we.

This time around, a forged of black actors plays the Loman family, and that’s the revival’s most enlivening aspect. When Willy’s white boss Howard (Blake DeLong) speaks to him dismissively, as an example, there’s a newfound racial subtext that works well without altering the script in any respect.

Wendell Pierce of “The Wire” and Broadway’s “Clybourne Park” takes on the role of that old titan of American patriarchs, Willy, the 60-year-old traveling salesman who proudly boasts of his success and recognition when his life is secretly in shambles. For essentially the most part, Pierce sells it.

But his Willy is a loud performance, and the actor seems to experience Willy’s bluster and braggadocio — the showy bits. He’s at his best, though, when he finds morsels tenderness and introspection for this imposing figure. It’s in those parts when the actor’s energy — often too frenetic — has real, powerful focus.

His unfailingly supportive wife Linda is played by Sharon D Clarke, from last season’s musical “Caroline, Or Change.” Whereas Caroline was stalwartly cold, Clarke’s Linda is an amiable “Stand By Your Man” type. She never recoils when Willy shouts at her, and in her dewy eyes he can do no mistaken. At times, her constant devotion bowls you over; at others, it’s one-note.

And Khris Davis is Biff, the favourite son who moved out West against Willy’s wishes and may’t live as much as his father’s lofty dreams. Davis is a real performer, but his Biff doesn’t have much rebel spark or glimmers of Willy’s passed-down ferocity. Not much is memorable about it. Why Biff traveled to a different coast to be with horses, and what he desires for him and his brother Completely satisfied’s (McKinley Belcher III) lives gets short shrift.

The actors usually are not helped along by Anna Fleischle’s uninspired set — window and door frames, furniture and various boxes that fly up or slide out and in when needed. They lack sturdiness, never give the illusion of a house and conjure no feelings from us. I used to be also postpone by a narrow beam of sunshine that shakily traverses the stage at any time when the ghost of Willy’s older brother Ben (André De Shields) enters. It looks like any individual pressed the mistaken button on accident.

“Salesman,” at all times a protracted sit, settles on an even-keeled gear early on and stubbornly sticks to it — so the production feels countless. The climactic fight all of the strategy to the inevitable conclusion is just not affectingly tragic, and there is no such thing as a construct to talk of.

Nice songs, but not enough attention was paid to the fundamentals.

There are more tricks than exciting drama in the most recent revival of “Death of a Salesman,” which opened Sunday night on Broadway.

Jazz music often underscores and pacifies the motion, and characters will sing out their pain, needlessly, after delivering a number of the most famous monologues ever written.

The stage is bathed in dreamy purples and blues, looking more like Tennessee Williams’ memory play “The Glass Menagerie” than the craggy tale of Arthur Miller’s Willy Loman. 

And in scenes that briefly whisk us to a more promising past, there are shiny, rapid-fire camera clicks that take the word “flashback” a tad too literally.

None of those add-ons refresh or galvanize the story — they sedate it like theatrical Xanax. 

Revivals should shake things up (though the 2012 revival starring Philip Seymour Hoffman reused Jo Mielziner’s famous original set to great acclaim), but in director Miranda Cromwell’s production from London they contribute an animatronic, distant quality to what could be a profoundly moving and reliably relatable play.

The pieces don’t connect, and neither will we.

This time around, a forged of black actors plays the Loman family, and that’s the revival’s most enlivening aspect. When Willy’s white boss Howard (Blake DeLong) speaks to him dismissively, as an example, there’s a newfound racial subtext that works well without altering the script in any respect.

Wendell Pierce of “The Wire” and Broadway’s “Clybourne Park” takes on the role of that old titan of American patriarchs, Willy, the 60-year-old traveling salesman who proudly boasts of his success and recognition when his life is secretly in shambles. For essentially the most part, Pierce sells it.

But his Willy is a loud performance, and the actor seems to experience Willy’s bluster and braggadocio — the showy bits. He’s at his best, though, when he finds morsels tenderness and introspection for this imposing figure. It’s in those parts when the actor’s energy — often too frenetic — has real, powerful focus.

His unfailingly supportive wife Linda is played by Sharon D Clarke, from last season’s musical “Caroline, Or Change.” Whereas Caroline was stalwartly cold, Clarke’s Linda is an amiable “Stand By Your Man” type. She never recoils when Willy shouts at her, and in her dewy eyes he can do no mistaken. At times, her constant devotion bowls you over; at others, it’s one-note.

And Khris Davis is Biff, the favourite son who moved out West against Willy’s wishes and may’t live as much as his father’s lofty dreams. Davis is a real performer, but his Biff doesn’t have much rebel spark or glimmers of Willy’s passed-down ferocity. Not much is memorable about it. Why Biff traveled to a different coast to be with horses, and what he desires for him and his brother Completely satisfied’s (McKinley Belcher III) lives gets short shrift.

The actors usually are not helped along by Anna Fleischle’s uninspired set — window and door frames, furniture and various boxes that fly up or slide out and in when needed. They lack sturdiness, never give the illusion of a house and conjure no feelings from us. I used to be also postpone by a narrow beam of sunshine that shakily traverses the stage at any time when the ghost of Willy’s older brother Ben (André De Shields) enters. It looks like any individual pressed the mistaken button on accident.

“Salesman,” at all times a protracted sit, settles on an even-keeled gear early on and stubbornly sticks to it — so the production feels countless. The climactic fight all of the strategy to the inevitable conclusion is just not affectingly tragic, and there is no such thing as a construct to talk of.

Nice songs, but not enough attention was paid to the fundamentals.