'Death of a Salesman' Returns Tonight

The Croswell Opera House brings back a familiar face for the acclaimed Arthur Miller analysis of a traveling salesman and his family.

By Arlene Bachanov

Daily Telegram Special Writer

ADRIAN - The show playwright Arthur Miller called “the tragedy of the common man,” his acclaimed 1949 play “Death of a Salesman,” opens tonight on the Croswell Opera House stage.

Curtain time is 8 p.m. for Friday and Saturday shows and 3 p.m. for Sunday performances through Feb. 5. Tickets are $20 regular admission and $18 for students and senior citizens, with group rates also available, and are available by calling the Croswell at 264-7469, visiting the box office at 129 E. Maumee St. in Adrian or going online at www.croswell.org.

Adrian's Terry Hissong plays the role of Willy Loman, the traveling salesman who's spent his whole life “way out there in the blue, riding a smile and a shoeshine,” just as he did in the Croswell's 1985 production of the show. Willy's wife, Linda, is played by Julianne Dolan of Adrian.

To Hissong, Miller's groundbreaking play, which won the Tony Award, the prestigious New York Drama Critics' Circle Award and the 1949 Pulitzer Prize for drama, “was perhaps the first play to puncture the American veneer - what defines success, the ‘Ozzie and Harriet' stereotype, the false system of values.”

It's not an easy story either to sit through or to perform. “My father walked out of it,” Hissong said of the 1985 production. “It hit too close to home.”

Similarly, Dolan as she works on the play is constantly reminded of her father, who lost his job when he couldn't keep up with changing technology by learning to use a computer.

“Everybody has a piece of them that feels like Willie,” she said. “And you can either make Willie's choice, or not.”

Ultimately, Miller's play is a story of how a regular guy deals - badly - with the growing failures in his life. “Interestingly, we never know exactly what Willie sold,” which in a sense makes him all the more universal, said Robert Soller, who directs the play, as he did the 1985 production.

“As the play opens, you have this sense that his way of selling worked,” Soller said. “As time goes on, though, the old way of doing things doesn't work for him anymore. Plus, he's older, and out of shape, and fading mentally.”

Playing one of the greatest tragic characters of American theater is a tough task for Hissong.

“I have to get ready to play him by getting in touch with when he's lucid,” he said. “But I (also) try not to be too judgmental of him.”

Soller analyzed the play for his master's thesis in the 1950s “and became very enamored of it,” he said. With the story, he added, Miller redefined the entire concept of “tragedy” as it's used in a theatrical sense, because in this case the main character finds no redemption.

“He thinks that by committing suicide he'll solve (his son) Biff's problems, but he never sees his responsibility for all that's happened in this dysfunctional family,” he said.

That “dysfunctional family” includes wayward sons Biff and Happy (played by Denny Jacobs of Adrian and Ryan Burke of Brooklyn, respectively), and of course Linda, whose codependent way of dealing with the family's issues contributes to the problem but yet is something Dolan believes earns her character the empathy of many who see the show.

“Linda is very intuitive and she tries to protect Willie from what's going on,” she said. “(She) does everything she can to avoid another blowup. She loves him and stands by him.”

There's another major, but rather unusual, member of the family present on-stage as well: the Loman house itself. Soller's 1950s master's thesis work led to a crucial decision made for both the Croswell's 1985 and present productions of the show.

“I discovered that the set is just integral to the story,” he said. “In this play, the set, to me, is another character.”

And so, what Croswell audiences will see is a faithful reproduction of the original set design by Jo Mielziner, who after he'd worked on “Death of a Salesman” even wrote an entire book centering on the process. Soller thinks Mielziner's design may even have led Miller to make changes in the play because of the way the script's timing of lines matches perfectly with the design of the house.

Sharp-eyed audience members will notice that the house isn't architecturally correct, which isn't a mistake. Much of the story centers on life memories, and while the house is a vital part of those memories, “no one's memory is perfect,” Soller said. In fact, Hissong added, the cast in its preparation for the show “spent a lot of time investigating just how imperfect the memories are.”

Also part of the Croswell production are Peter Mackey as Willy's successful brother Ben, Jim Brian as Charley, William Eversden as Bernard, Bruce Hardcastle as Howard, T.S. Sanger as The Woman, Sharon Rodriguez as Miss Forsythe, Sadie Comstock as Letta, Kurt Snyder as Stanley and Cindy Farnham as Jenny. Lighting design is by Sarah Hebron and costume design is by Susan Eversden.

'Death of a Salesman' returns tonight