DEATH OF A SALESMAN Belvoir presents DEATH OF A SALESMAN By ARTHUR MILLER Director SIMON STONE Belvoir’s production of Death of a Salesman opened at Belvoir St Theatre on Wednesday 27 June 2012. Set Designer RALPH MYERS Costume Designer ALICE BABIDGE Lighting Designer NICK SCHLIEPER Composer & Sound Designer STEFAN GREGORY Assistant Director JENNIFER MEDWAY Fight Choreographer SCOTT WITT Stage Managers LUKE McGETTIGAN, MEL DYER (from 31 July) Assistant Stage Managers MEL DYER, CHANTELLE FOSTER (from 31 July) Stage Management Secondment GRACE NYE-BUTLER With The Woman / Jenny / Miss Forsythe BLAZEY BEST Biff PATRICK BRAMMALL Willy Loman COLIN FRIELS Ben STEVE LE MARQUAND Linda / Letta GENEVIEVE LEMON Happy HAMISH MICHAEL Charley / Stanley PIP MILLER Bernard / Howard LUKE MULLINS PRODUCTION THANKS Tri-point Rigging, Incu Men’s and Women’s Wear, Angela Greenaway from Reuze Vintage. PhotoGraphY Heidrun Löhr DESIGN Alphabet Studio BGenevieve Lemon 1 Simon Stone in conversation with Ralph Myers Ralph: Why this play? and turns in on itself in order to purge some kind of perceived danger. Simon: I reread it a couple of years And both of those scenarios have ago and I was astounded at this occurred throughout history and will play about the decline of American continue to occur as long as there are capitalism, which in a post-GFC humans on the planet. context seemed incredibly prescient. It was as if it had been written and Ralph: Reading The Crucible of put in one of those time capsules – course we all know that it’s a thinly to be found in 2012. veiled analogy for the McCarthy trials, but with Salesman it wasn’t until I In its original production it would watched it in rehearsals the other day have been a play about a particular that I realised how subversive and man failing where other men frankly socialist in its outlook it is, or at have succeeded. In this era it is least how political. about a dream which was never going to work anyway. So Willy Simon: People don’t seem to have Loman becomes much more of an noticed it’s a very anti-American play. everyman. It’s a scathing attack on the most sacred principle at the core of the Ralph: Do you think plays begin their American Dream: that anybody can lives as being about a specific set of become anything they want. The play circumstances and become universal actually says that some people are over time? just not going to be able to make it, Simon: I think location and time are and the day they realise that they’ll be always of incidental importance in the happier. That’s almost nihilistic. great plays. It’s often hard to tell if a Ralph: Or is it deeply conservative master playwright has written one of to say that some people rise to the their great plays until you have some top because they’re really great and perspective on it. Of Miller’s two some people like Willy Loman just great plays, one of them, Death of a aren’t? Salesman, is about all of the dreams that parents have for their children Simon: It doesn’t seem to be a play and the fundamental inability for a about what kind of person rises to child to both live up to those dreams the top though. It’s about: if you’re and to become their own person – not the sort of person who rises to how paradoxically impossible that the top, what’s the best way to be is. The other, The Crucible, is about happy? It’s a survival guide for losers. how a society becomes cannibalistic We are all at some point in our lives Luke Mullins Simon Stone 03 like Willy Loman. If we are able to Ralph: This afternoon in rehearsal we are attached to America. It’s such But the thing about the American find a way out then it’s by accepting Colin was putting his face in his a seminal moment: as we give away Dream is the notion that the pinnacle the situation we are in as the first hands, saying: I can’t bear it, I can’t that dream we can finally reflect on of achievement is the same for every tenet. But for Willy, who’s living the watch this scene, I can’t be involved, it and think about what it has meant single person in the country, which American Dream, you never give up it’s too painful, it’s too emotional to to us. And we’re doing that, we’re is fundamentally unrealistic since and you never admit that you’ve lost. take. Why did you cast Colin Friels in starting that phase now. only one person gets the job. There the role of Willy? are going to be a lot of disappointed Ralph: So if it’s a play about the There will be a point in time where it people if everyone grows up thinking American Dream how come your Simon: It was just an instinct at becomes like King Lear. It’s too full of that they’re going to be the President actors aren’t using American first. Which Colin has retrospectively references we still understand for it to of the United States. accents? justified through showing me how be a completely timeless classic. But Willy Loman needs to be played. I’ve in 50 years or 100 years time it will be Ralph: Well you were born in Simon: Because the American never seen a great dreamer on stage like King Lear. It’s essentially Lear and Switzerland, I was born in Australia; Dream has been dreaming us since before. People play dreamers a lot; The Cherry Orchard put together. It’s we have no chance, you have to be a the Second World War. Because we they reach after it but I genuinely get about a man giving away his empire natural-born citizen. live in the American empire. Look the feeling that Colin is like an open and his terrible fear that he won’t at Europe right now; it’s falling over Simon: Dammit. wound when he sees and hears and have a legacy. In every culture there’s because of a post-Second World smells the world. The world has such that fear of death and the desire to War American Dream. It’s actually an overwhelming effect on Colin; leave something behind. And the important for Salesman, as a searing he’s deeply moved by it. When he’s only way most of us do that is by indictment of this dream of capitalism, evoking all of these worlds on stage procreating. to be produced in the countries that that we can’t see literally because weren’t even part of the invention of Ralph: Or planting seeds desperately of the sparseness of the production, that dream; it was just thrust down in your vegetable garden before you he’s taking us to all of those places their throats. kill yourself. with every turn of phrase. The Ralph: I love that as an audience production that we came up with Simon: Because we all know we member you absorb the fact that wouldn’t be able to work if we didn’t can’t escape death, but we want to they’re speaking in Australian have Colin in that role. If it doesn’t feel like we had some sort of effect on accents, and that there’s a tension exist at all on stage it has to exist in the world before we leave it. between that and the context of the the audience’s imagination and that Ralph: I think that’s a really interesting play and the references but you don’t can’t start without a great dreamer point of this play: Loman wanted to care. It’s like watching Shakespeare in provoking their imagination. Colin is feel like he had an effect on the world, our own voice. that great dreamer. yet he would have been much better Simon: Yeah, that’s right and Ralph: When does a play stop being off had he been one of those people Shakespeare proved that you a contemporary play and start being who was happy just existing. Instead don’t need to have any realistic a classic? he’s wasted his life. representation of any place on the Simon: I think there are two phases, Simon: That’s true, one of the lines is stage for audiences to be able to actually. I think the first is when it Charley saying ‘…forget about it’, in paint the picture of Padua or Verona starts being relevant again. At that relation to his worries about Biff. And or Ancient Rome. time it experiences its first important Willy replies, ‘then what have I got revival. And I think for Australia to remember?’ That idea of having the first time Salesman has meant to place memory into the world, of anything other than its original context yourself and your deeds. is now. The first moment historically of us cutting the apron strings by which 04 05 Colin Friels On Miller Gabrielle Bonney I have, I think, provided actors with was destroyed and they lost almost some good things to do and say. everything. The theatre critic Michael What people may find in them, Ratcliffe said of the effect of this or fail to find, is not in my control momentous event on Miller: ‘This first anymore. I can only say that life great discord of the American century has not been made less for what informs all his work.