Death of a Salesman (review)

Spoilers ahoy! 

As it happens, this year has been one full of excellent productions of classics. Latest is Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller, by A Noise Within.  My own theory, for whatever it might be worth, focuses on the times in which we are living.  Art comments, questions, examines LIFE.  When we do the same we find art speaks more to us, so we pay more attention. 

Especially the classics, and most especially the ones who address issues of our own times.

Arthur Miller's most famous play is slightly autobiographical (a lot of them are), but what really makes it resonate remains the fact it feels autobiographical for someone we know.  To some extent, also, for ourselves.  

Willy Loman (Geoff Elliott) walks on stage looking exhausted beyond words.  Not just physically, but down into the soul.  His wife Linda (Deborah Strang) does her best to listen, to comfort, to basically help as much as she can.  Along the way we soon learn this couple's two sons are staying with them for a bit.  Happy (Ian Littleworth) is the son who has his own apartment but decided to visit for a day or so.  Biff (David Kepner), the older son and clearly the favorite, arrived from Texas after years of farming, wandering, trying to find...something.  

Clearly, this family has problems.  Problems with a capital P that rhymes with C that stands for Capitalism.  Willy in particular loses himself in memories, focusing on past and present hopes, ideas, fears and frustrations, his prejudices and strange blind spots.  Almost immediately we get a sense of him as a man lost, a man who increasingly seems never ever to have found himself, never learned the things he desperately believes he needed.  Now in his sixties, tired and confused, his career as a salesman dwindling by any metric, the man visibly is coming apart at the seams--not least his demands from others while proving himself all but incapable of listening to others.

That we don't hate this man is one of Miller's major achievements.  Instead, we ache for him.

As well we should.  Willy Loman is us, after all.  Trapped in a world he did not choose, bereft of good options (at least any he can perceive and/or accept), without the personal resources to be more than desperate.  Far too close for all our lives for comfort--and hence fascinating in way like a slow motion train wreck.  Except we weep instead of gawk.

Miller wanted a play without scene breaks, and the action of the play--including memories and dreams--pretty much flow without interruption, at least in the first act.  The scale feels intimate and somehow vastly deep.  Unlike in classical tragedy, Willy did not make anyone personal mistake--his errors, while real, seem all very understandable,  entirely human.  Devastating, though.  Because for all his preening about his friends and how esteemed he says he is, all the support others offer remains meager.  Not individually, but cumulatively.  He walks a lonely road, even when holding a wife in his arms, gazing at sons he adores who likewise adore him.  Because they aren't enough.  Life is bigger than any one family, no matter how close--even were they flawless and these folks show off just how human every single one of them are.

We watch a play which poses several questions, which sooner or later mostly do get answers.  Exactly why is Willy in this situation?  How did Biff's life fall apart so totally, and what did Willy have to do with that?  Is there a way out for Willy, for Biff, for Happ or for Linda?  Out of a stifling, shallow present of short-term hopes and concerns which threaten to overwhelm?  

Director Julia Rodriquez-Elliott gives us an astounding theatrical experience, not least because with Scenic Designer Frederica Nascimento the "look" and "feel" of this production comes across as slightly less naturalistic, leaning more towards the dreamlike or mythic.  Frankly, I will always applaud this, not least because it leans into live theatre's strengths rather than attempting to copy film or television.  Likewise I want to herald the uniformly fine cast, including Kasey Mahaffy, Cassandra Marie Murphy, Bert Emmett, David Nevell, Michael Uribes, Jacob Cherry, Dominique Razon, and Rachel K. Han.  From literally the very first moment when the play begins until the very final moment, I felt totally sucked in, soul and mind.

Death of a Salesman plays Thursdays, Fridays & Saturdays @ 7:30 p.m., Saturdays & Sundays @ 2 p.m. until April 29, 2026 (no matiness on March 28) at A Noise Within,  3352 E Foothill Blvd. Pasadena, CA 91107 (Free parking available directly behind the theater at the Sierra Madre Villa Metro parking structure, 149 N. Halstead St.

Sweeney Todd 2024 (review)

Spoilers ahoy!  

This marks the sixth production I have seen of what is arguably Stephen Sondheim's most gothic work--an eerie, strangely funny, and nearly always very beautiful musical/operetta about a figure from the cheapest of Victorian literature forms--the "penny dreadful."

Based on an adaptation by Christopher Bond that gave a motive to the "Demon Barber of Fleet Street" Sweeney Todd allows productions to really go to down.  So many rich characters!  So many ways to make this weird almost steampunk nightmare can be brought on stage!

Yet, strangely, most productions seek to copy either the movie or some other already popular production.  One of the many, many reasons I loved A Noise Within's current version is how much they avoided that.  In fact, several times I was absolutely startled!  A slightly rare and often delightful event in seeing a show I know so well.

The basic plot is almost simple.  Todd (Geoff Elliott) arrives in early Victorian London with a sailor named Anthony (James Everts), but is filled with rage and loathing towards the city.  He goes and finds Mrs. Lovett (Cassandra Marie Murphy), who runs a meat pie shop under an old flat no one will rent because people say it is haunted.  It turns out something happened there years and years ago--when Todd was a happily married barber with a beautiful wife and infant daughter, transported to penal servitude for life by one Judge Turpin (Jeremy Robb) who lusted after Todd's wife.  His accomplice in all this was his Beadle (Harrison White).

Todd's frustrations lead to a solemn and insane declaration of how "WE  ALL DESERVE TO DIE!"  He becomes what we could call a serial killer, with Mrs. Lovett insisting they use his victims as a source of meat for her pies.  The last notion becomes one of the most iconic and funny songs in musical history.

Amid all of this Anthony becomes the love interest of Johanna (Joanna A. Jones), Todd's daughter and Judge Turpin's now-ward.  Another barber named Pirelli (Kasey Mahaffy), a street urchin named Toby (Josey Montana McCoy), and mad Beggar Woman (Amber Liekhus) all weave their way into this story, under the direction of Julia Rodriguez-Elliott.  It all makes for macabre comedy and tragedy at the same time, a little bit of grand guignol blended with Charles Dickens and sprinkled with some George Bernard Shaw.  

While it is not perfect--there are a few nuances that struck a wrong note for me, but in questioning other audience members no one else seemed bothered, so I'm not describing them is worthwhile.  I'd rather discuss what was new and delightfully different--like the sexual tension between Mrs. Lovett and Toby, the way Todd himself came across as a total psychopath (which to be honest took a little of the passion away from the tale), the chorus members feeling as if they are individuals in this dark world, the extraordinary staging of many set pieces (not least the murders as well as the oven).  

Performances of Sweeney Todd take place February 17 through March 17 on Thursdays at 7:30 p.m.; Fridays at 8 p.m.; Saturdays at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m.; and Sundays at 2 p.m.  A Noise Within is located at 3352 E Foothill Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91107

Metamorphoses (review)

Spoilers ahoy!

I'm going to cut straight to the chase.  Go see Metamorphoses at A Noise Within theatre if you possibly can.  Never mind about movies with great CGI or retellings of fun legends in a comic book vein.  Those are not bad things, not by any stretch of the imagination.

But this, this is genuine magic.  Real magic.  Transformation.  Watching and partaking of this performance is the very act inherent in the title.  You will no longer be the same person when you leave.

When you walk into the theatre, almost immediately the scent of chlorine makes itself known.  Much of the stage consists of a pool--a body of water which in the course of the show will become a wild variety of places and things and acts and states of being.  Sometimes it even becomes a simple pool of water. 

Here myths come alive, starting and ending with the seemingly simple but mighty act of granting a wish.  Under the direction of Julia Rodriguez-Elliott, a nine member ensemble breath themselves into a wide variety of characters from Greek Myth in this play by Mary Zimmerman.  Aphrodite, Orpheus, Phaeton, Myrrah, Ceyx, Hades--a long, long list.  If you don't recognize some of these names (I did not), worry not.  You will get to know them, maybe even love them, celebrate some, weep for others.  Grief and hope, arrogance and lust, revenge and gratitude, even incest and cannibalism wander on stage--becoming as much a part of the audience as Psyche and Eros (the Soul and the Heart) or Midas and Bacchus (for all intents and purposes a djinn who grants a terrible wish).

It begins with the creation of the world, and ends with a song about love.

Sydney A. Mason, Cassandra Marie Murphy, Eriko Soto, Trisha Miller, Nicole Javier, Rafael Goldstein, Kasey Mahaffy, DeJuan Chrisopher, and Geoff Elliott are the actors who become in turn gods and men, women and monsters, spirits and children.  Describing the stories would do them a disservice.  I can only urge you once more--take part in this journey if you possibly can.  And don't complain about the lack of air conditioning.  The entire cast ends up soaking wet sooner or later.  Nobody wants them to get sick!  Right?

Metamorphoses plays Thursdays at 7:30pm, Fridays at 8pm, Saturdays at 2pm and 8pm, and Sundays at 2pm until June 5, 2022 at A Noise Within, 3352 E. Foothill Blvd, Pasadena CA 91107.