At age 57, “Death of a Salesman” has grown nearly as old and weary as Willy Loman himself.
Appreciating Arthur Miller’s masterwork as a museum piece is easy. Visualizing how it left ordinary Joes openly blubbering in 1949 takes more imagination. A recent Denver Center staging of Miller’s “All My Sons” made the case the latter might even be the better play.
The Aurora Fox’s new production isn’t blubber-worthy. But it is solidly staged and looks gorgeous in every way – sets, lights, costumes and sound.
If anything gets people talking about this staging – the third by a local troupe in a year – it’ll be William Denis’ love-it-or-hate-it take on the iconic sad sack to whom, his wife begs, “attention must be paid.”
It’s not that Denis doesn’t work himself to the bone; he does. But just as Willy was the ultimate symbol of contradiction in an era of great American prosperity, there are irreconcilable contradictions about Denis’ approach to the character.
Most blatantly, he portrays this New Yorker with an English accent. More troubling, he plays Willy not as if he were a real man disappearing into the confines of a tiny suburban living room, but with the epic bombast of a Shakespearean actor performing at the Globe. His Willy is so far gone in the first five minutes, there’s little arc left to traverse. Occasional restraint – a whisper, an embrace of quiet – would go a long way.
Most puzzling is the constant, frantic stammering. Is this the brilliant essaying of Loman’s disintegrating verbal dexterity, or an actor struggling for his lines? That a chunk of the crucial bar scene vaporized at a recent performance argues for the latter.
At least Denis has the right pathos to make for a sympathetic and believable Willy. It helps that everyone around him is excellent, notably Karen Erickson’s faithful wife Linda, Ed Cord’s lech son Happy, Matt Zambrano’s nerdy neighbor kid Bernard and Kurt Soderstrom’s Charley.
But if attention must be paid here, it must be paid to Brett Aune, lured home from Los Angeles to play Biff by guest director Chip Walton of the Curious Theatre Company.
Aune is one of Denver’s top actors of the past decade, but casting him as Biff was a risk. Biff is described as an Adonis athlete and a rugged, sun-loving outdoorsman. Aune, bless him, fills out a jock’s letter sweater like an indie-rock waif, and looks twice as pale. It is to Aune’s credit, then, that in summoning the full focus and fury of Biff’s discontent and disconnectedness, the physical incongruity is a quick afterthought.
Willy is just a man struggling to be heard, a man hammered by the cruelty of hope and the lie of promise. His steadfast belief in his eventual success gives way to the greater delusion that his surely will be a meaningful death. But the cosmic joke is on him. The salesman has bought an American bill of goods.
Theater critic John Moore can be reached at 303-820-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com.
“Death of a Salesman” | ** 1/2 RATING
DRAMA|Aurora Fox, 9900 E. Colfax Ave.|THROUGH MAY 14|7:30 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays|2 hours, 40 minutes| $18-$22|303-739-1970
