Nathan Lane Stars In Blistering Revival

Don’t waste time asking whether we really need another Death of a Salesman, and certainly don’t even begin to question whether Nathan Lane has the dramatic chops to tackle one of American theater’s great tragedies. Yes we do and of course he does.

Director Joe Mantello shines a new light on – or, more accurately, casts some new shadows over – Arthur Miller’s oft-produced masterpiece, taking the play (and us) out of the melancholy confines of that lived-in, empty-nest and famously “small, fragile-seeming” Brooklyn home “boxed in” by new apartment towers.

Instead, Mantello sets this revival starring Lane, Laurie Metcalf, Christopher Abbott and Ben Ahlers on the mostly bare, often dimly lit stage of Broadway‘s large Winter Garden Theatre (where it opens tonight, and where musicals more often fill the venue). It might be too pat to suggest that the stark, near cave-like environment mirrors Willy Loman’s dark night of the soul, but damned if it doesn’t.

As for Lane’s casting, no one who saw his ferocious Roy Cohn in 2018’s Angels In America would have a doubt that his range is expansive enough to contain Miller’s broken, angry “little boat looking for a harbor.” Lane enters the darkness in a blinding light – headlights, actually, aimed directly at the audience as the car – Willy’s eventual death trap, we know – inches onto the stage. The darkness, however grim, is more comforting than the glare or the ever-present mound of dirt that looks all too much like a grave waiting to be filled.

The visual – scene design by Chloe Lamford, lighting design by Jack Knowles – isn’t the only departure from Salesman tradition on view in this venture produced by Scott Rudin, Barry Diller and Roy Furman. The Loman boys Biff and Happy are portrayed by four actors: as young adults by, respectively, Christopher Abbott and Ben Ahlers and as teens by Joaquin Consuelos and Jake Termine. The standard approach is to have the same (adult) actors play their characters in both life stages, but Mantello’s decision to divvy things up works: We can sometimes see both iterations of Biff and Happy simultaneously, letting us feel, as Willy surely does, the sad passage of time, his present sons emotionally out of his reach, their doting past selves nothing but illusion and dead hopes.

If Mantello finds some elasticity in presentation, the basics remain: Death of a Salesman is the story of Willy Loman, a “low man,” as many remember from lit class, in the American hierarchy, a staunch believer in an American Dream – work hard, be liked, succeed – who finds that age, shortcomings and a rigged system have little regard for youthful ambitions. At 63, Willy is broke, his career prospects grim, he’s too tired for the road life of a salesman and, most brutal of all, he’s lost the love and respect of his favorite son Biff.

With our own knowledge of what’s to come in the couple of decades after the play ends, we can see Biff as something of a proto-hippie drop-out, getting back to a garden-farm out West in a total rejection of Willy’s rat race ambitions. Younger son Happy is, as his nickname suggests, one of life’s surface skimmers, mimicking dad’s professional blueprint but with zero conviction and dedication. He takes bribes from clients, he sleeps with his bosses’ wives, he makes empty promises to his parents about settling down and starting a family. He wants only the parental attention that he’s never received, being in Biff’s long shadow, and his pledges are as inconsequential as his life seems to be. He, not Biff, is the logical extension of Willy, but lacking the true believer’s philosophy.

Of course – and spoiler alert if anyone besides Laurie Metcalf has never previously read or seen the play (as she confirmed in a recent interview with The New York Times) – Biff’s devastating rejection of all things Willy began some years prior when the high schooler showed up unexpectedly at Willy’s on-the-road Boston hotel only to discover his dad’s extramarital infidelity. The family man, it runs out, is a cheater and a liar, and Biff can’t forgive what another classic American stage character might call the mendacity of it all.

The emotional power of Miller’s tale has always radiated from disintegration – of Willy, of his family, of his dreams. Linda is the play’s heart, fully aware of her beloved’s shortcomings – she knows he only pretends to make those sales calls, the paltry money he brings home merely the handouts of a neighbor and friend – but she insists on preserving his barely-there dignity, most forcefully in the iconic, heartrending “attention must be paid” speech she makes to her boys.

Metcalf is, as always, a marvel, her Linda a fully developed character with an inner life (watch her facial expressions, accepting and defensive at once, as Willy cruelly and repeatedly tells her to butt out of the conversations he’s having with Biff). If Miller made Willy the embodiment of self-delusion, and Biff the defiant, angry forsaking of those delusions, Linda is compassion as byproduct of insight. In a sense, she is the sole political character in the play, understanding on a deep level just how The System can grind a man like Willy to pulp. She, too, will be broken by life, but unlike Willy she understands exactly why.

Metcalf’s soulful performance – she and director Mantello, her frequent collaborator, work their magic yet again – is matched step by step by Abbott turning in another fine stage performance (following his 2023 Off Broadway turn in Danny and the Deep Blue Sea) and Ahlers, making his Broadway debut. They are entirely convincing as brothers – something other Biffs and Happys don’t always achieve – just as they’re believable as the slightly older iterations sharing the stage with younger actors portraying their younger characters. (Joaquin Consuelos, impressive as Young Biff, is making his Broadway debut in the same month his father, Mark Consuelos, is doing the same in Fallen Angels; Kelly Rippa will have some play-going to do this spring.) Jonathan Cake makes for a suitably unknowable ghost memory of Willy’s long-dead brother Ben.

The attentive casting extends to the non-Lomans as well. K. Todd Freeman is all tough love as Willy’s only real, if forever put-upon, friend, and Tasha Lawrence makes a strong impression as Willy’s good-time, if mercenary, fling. So too does Jake Silbermann in the small but significant role of the friendly waiter with concern, maybe even pity, for the left-behind salesman.

But first and last, Salesman is Willy’s story, and generation after Broadway generation has thrown its best into the role, from Lee J. Cobb, Fredric March (in the 1951 film), George C. Scott, Brian Dennehy and Dustin Hoffman to Philip Seymour Hoffman and Wendell Pierce. Lane takes his place among the best, his Willy Loman a powder keg of frustration and disappointment and deep, deep sadness. Lane uses his loud, outside voice to excellent effect, his shouts of exasperation and anger giving way to instant regret and recrimination. Watch, future Willys, and pay attention.

Title: Death of a Salesman
Venue: Broadway’s Winter Garden Theatre
Written By: Arthur Miller
Directed By: Joe Mantello
Cast: Nathan Lane, Laurie Metcalf, Christopher Abbott, Ben Ahlers, Joaquin Consuelos, Jake Termine, Karl Green, Tasha Lawrence, K. Todd Freeman, Jonathan Cake, Michael Benjamin Washington, Jake Silbermann, Katherine Romans, Mary Neely
Running Time: 2 hr 50 min (including intermission)