Theatre
Death of a Salesman
Arthur Miller · 1949
Synopsis
Willy Loman, a sixty-three-year-old travelling salesman, comes home late at night to Brooklyn with his two sample cases: he set out on a tour of New England but could not get any further than Yonkers. His sons, Biff, thirty-four, back from the West, and Happy, are sleeping that night in their old room. He talks to himself, and the set opens up: we see what he sees again, his brother Ben who went off to make his fortune in Africa, the boys as teenagers, his wife Linda mending her stockings, a woman in a Boston hotel room.
Context
The first act was written in less than a day and the rest in six weeks, in a small studio he had just built himself at Roxbury; the working title was The Inside of His Head. First performed on 10 February 1949 at the Morosco Theatre, in a production directed by Elia Kazan, with Lee J. Cobb and Mildred Dunnock, the play is set in a transparent set by Jo Mielziner, where the actors walk through the walls when the scene turns to memory. In 1983, Miller staged it himself in Beijing.
Who it is for
Two acts and an epilogue, on a set that shows three rooms at once. Adapted into French by Raymond Gérôme in 1952, then by Éric Kahane and Jean-Claude Grumberg.
Prizes and reception
Pulitzer Prize, New York Drama Critics' Circle Award and six Tony Awards in 1949; 742 performances in its original run.
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