ARTHUR Miller's Willy Loman is one of the great modern, tragic figures - an everyman of America's post-depression years but also any time, anywhere where human expendability is in the ascendant. No wonder, then, that Miller's 1949 play should have a particular flush about it for a British audience all too well acquainted with down-sizing and galloping ageism.
Loman's story is that of mid-20th century labouring man waking up one morning to discover he's surplus to requirements. Miller's triumph is to make something heroic of this common man - the 60-something salesman exhausted by thousands of miles of lonely driving, faithful service, and hopelessly unrealistic dreams for the two boys he has raised.
But in David Thacker's vaporous, stream-of-consciousness production, it is not an entirely convincing one. There were plenty of tears by the end - in the audience as much as on stage - so something clearly gets through. But it's almost despite the production rather than because of it.
Alum Armstrong's Loman signals subjugation the moment he arrives on Fran Thompson's revolving, neo-abstract set with its over-symbolic half-hewn central oak. Marjorie Yates's painfully-stoic Linda Loman, extolling her husband's virtues - ``attention must be paid to this man'' - even as he shouts and abuses her, seems unduly self-sacrificial.
Yet Death of a Salesman remains a humane, decent play about the perils of over-investment in one's children and the danger of family illusions - the stripping away of which by Mark Strong as Biff, Willy's golden boy son, provides by far the most powerful scene in the production. Hankies definitely in order.
Death of a Salesman plays in the National's repertoire in the Lyttelton until the spring when it tours, including Edinburgh's King Theatre early in March.
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