“Death of a Salesman” spotlights many contradictions that exist at the same time — reality and illusion, self-puffery and self-denigration, sensitivity and insensitivity, among them.
It therefore seems appropriate to quote a pair of theatergoers leaving a recent Saturday matinee of the Ross Valley Players’ production. She, a plus-one who hadn’t seen the tragedy before: “That was painful to watch.” He, a theater buff: “That was one of the best productions of anything in the Bay Area this year.”
Both agree that Charles Queary is a spectacular Willy Loman, playwright Arthur Miller’s main character in the tragedy, smoothly switching from love to anger, from hubris to confusion, and displaying a string of other emotions.
His consistent brain fog, as he descends further into what was then called senility and is now known as dementia, is symbolized by smoke rising from a set designed by Ron Krempetz that creatively features the skeleton of a house.
Willy never quite loses his mind — despite being suicidal — but does often lose himself via dreams, “daymares,” and hallucinations.
The character, in fact, is a perfect foil at age 63 for the playwright to metaphorically express disdain for capitalism and the American dream, both of which Willy and his sons believe offer most of the population false hopes before junking and crushing them.
Willy has represented a middle-class everyman since 1949, when “Death of a Salesman” debuted on Broadway with Lee J. Cobb in the role only a decade after the United States was in the midst of the Great Depression.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning play is still relevant — with a handful of striking exceptions like a reference to something costing a nickel — to a nation in which polls insist the majority is fed up with President Donald Trump’s erratic tariffs and resultant high prices at the pump and supermarket, an endless war, and over-reaching deportation policies.
This play is not the kind you might normally expect at the Barn Theater at the Marin Art and Garden Center in Ross, or any other community theater, since those audiences lean toward old-fashioned drawing-room comedies and nearly new jukebox musicals.
The evergreen drama, a Tony-winner for best play, is set in 1940s Brooklyn, with costumes by Valera Coble pulling theatergoers back there almost instantly.
Willy, after 34 years of loyalty, is fired from his traveling salesman job by Howard (played short-temperedly by William Brosnahan), the son of the man who originally hired him.
That identical 34-year timeframe is also the age of Willy’s older son, Biff (portrayed with bravado and weakness by Brennan Pickman-Thoon).
Willy’s younger son, Happy (played by Evan Held as a man who has bigger dreams for his brother than himself), fills out the male triangle in a play that at times resembles a Greek or Shakespearean tragedy.
The crowd at the Barn becomes so spellbound that it didn’t seem to mind that two understudies are carrying scripts in their hands: Amanda Vitiello as Linda Loman, Willy’s supportive and understanding wife, and Greg Wilker as Ben, Willy’s brother who supposedly trekked into the jungle and four years later came out rich with diamonds.
But the audience does take every opportunity to periodically laugh out loud, a relief from the perpetual tension on stage.
The production’s director, Adrian Elfenbaum, keeps tons of dialogue moving so easily that nearly three hours pass without the audience craving a trim to the time length.
Miller has a knack of summing up his characters’ discontent with a few words. For instance:
• Happy, a hopeless womanizer, laments to brother Biff: “It’s what I always wanted. My own apartment, a car, and plenty of women. And still, goddammit, I’m lonely.”
• Biff opens up to his father Willy: “Why am I trying to become what I don’t want to be?”
• Willy talks to his wife Linda: “Work a lifetime to pay off a house. You finally own it, and there’s nobody to live in it.”
• Linda pleading with her sons about Willy: “Be sweet to him, be loving to him, because he’s just a little boat looking for a harbor.”
Sometimes there’s a brief soliloquy that also conveys a great deal, such as Biff talking to his younger brother about his ambivalence with the American dream: “To get on that subway on the hot mornings in summer. To devote your whole life to keeping stock, or making phone calls, or selling or buying. To suffer 50 weeks of the year for the sake of a two-week vacation, when all you really desire is to be outdoors, with your shirt off. And always to have to get ahead of the next fella. And still — that’s how you build a future.”
All things considered, this “Death of a Salesman” is surely a “must-see.”
The Ross Valley Players production of “Death of a Salesman” plays at the Barn Theater, 30 Sir Francis Drake Blvd., Ross, through Oct. 25. Tickets from $30 to $45 can be purchased online at www.rossvalleyplayers.com or calling 415-456-9555.
Woody Weingarten can be contacted via www.woodyweingarten.com or www.vitalitypress.com or www.voodee@sbcglobal.net.