Will you take that phoney dream and burn it before something happens?
– Biff
Alone on a bare stage, stands a
white car, headlights carving into the dark like twin knives, the tail lights a
fiery glow on the back wall, the dream already on fire. As the houselights
darken, a figure is revealed in the car – Willy Loman, the titular travelling
salesman. Considered one of the staples of the American dramatic canon, Arthur
Miller’s Death of a Salesman is about
“a man refusing to let go of the false dreams we were all once promised.” It’s
not a pretty play, either; rather, it’s grueling and harsh and unforgiving and
brutal, ferocious even, in its depiction of this crumbling dream.
