Stratford Festival's ‘Death of a Salesman’ is supremely well-acted but still disappoints. Here's why

So, what do we owe a classic work like this? Is a set of strong performances enough to justify a new production? Or must a director offer more to illuminate the text in fresh ways? 

I found myself asking those questions as I watched the Stratford Festival’s third revival of “Salesman,” which opened Thursday evening. And I’m torn. 

Across the board, the acting on stage at the Avon Theatre is extraordinary. As Willy Loman, the washed up travelling salesman disillusioned by life on the road and the unfulfilled promise of the American dream, Tom McCamus delivers a performance of total immersion. His Willy is haggard and bitter, constantly slipping in and out of reality. Even the cadence of his speech becomes increasingly erratic in his final hours, with McCamus slurring and mumbling his words.  

That this portrait is so devastating is a testament to how McCamus constructs it. The tragedy of his Willy Loman ultimately lies in his false sense of hope. In the play’s flashback sequences, we see Willy clinging to this hope with such conviction. He truly believes that his dreams — for himself, for his children — can become a reality. And so do we. 

Lucy Peacock, playing Willy’s wife, offers a welcome counterpoint to McCamus. Her speech is clipped, her tone direct. She talks to her husband as if she were a schoolmistress doling out instruction to a young child. It’s a performance that is, at times, explosive — when Peacock delivers Linda Loman’s iconic “attention must be paid” monologue, she slams her hands on the dinner table — but in other scenes, quietly restrained. Throughout, there’s never any doubt about the immense love Linda has for Willy. She is his greatest defender.

Josh Johnston plays the Lomans’ youngest son, Happy, who is the spitting image of his father and lost in a delusion of his own making. But it’s Joe Perry’s turn as the elder sibling, Biff, that’s most impressive. When he and McCamus are together on stage, this production crackles with the intensity of a bonfire. 

It’s really no surprise that this “Salesman” would be well-acted, given the brilliance of the material and the depth of the Stratford ensemble. It was really only a matter of casting — and in McCamus, Peacock, Johnston and Perry, the festival has found a strong central quartet. 

Yet despite these performances, director Dean Gabourie’s revival still left me disappointed. In a world where “Salesman” productions are a dime a dozen, I think it’s fair to expect more from a new staging than merely some fine acting. 

Miller’s 1949 drama is not a static museum piece. It’s an ever-evolving work that continually speaks to the society where it’s presented. And it demands to be cracked open, anew, by each successive generation of theatre-makers.

Miller himself kicked off this evolution of “Salesman” when he helped bring the play to China, demonstrating that the play’s themes — though framed within the context of America’s capitalistic society — were universal. More recently, the work’s first Broadway revival featuring an all-Black cast was revelatory, further breaking new ground and finding new meaning to Miller’s words. 

I’m not arguing that this Stratford revival needs to feature a racialized cast (though the festival is probably one of the few companies with a diverse enough talent pool to pull it off). But each production of such a classic should feel fresh. And in this regard, Gabourie’s staging misses the mark. 

While he draws some fine performances from this cast and does a particularly good job of developing the key relationships between the characters, Gabourie is working within the same container of many “Salesman” stagings that have come before. There’s nothing new here. It’s as if he approached the work like a museum curator handling a fragile object with cotton gloves.

A feeling of tentativeness pervades the revival. Scott Penner’s spare set, framed with towering tenement buildings on three sides of the stage, a few tables and chairs in the middle, feels stuck between realism and abstraction. Louise Guinand’s watery lighting designs only occasionally help to distinguish between the scenes set in the 1940s with the numerous flashback sequences. Gabourie’s staging itself is often flat and plodding. 

So, what do we owe a classic work like this?

At other regional theatres across North America, maybe Gabourie’s revival, buoyed by its performances, is enough. But at Stratford, a repertory company known for finding new ways into classic texts with confidence and fresh insights, I think “Salesman” is owed more than this.