CU Boulder 剧院 professor 芽科尔曼 reflects on Arthur Miller’s Pulitzer-winning play and why it’s a story that still has meaning

“A small man can be just as exhausted as a great man.”

这是一个简单却能引起共鸣的想法, first expressed 75 years ago this month when Arthur Miller’s 《博彩平台推荐》” debuted at the Morosco Theatre on Broadway. Since that time, the play has occupied an iconic place in the American consciousness.

为 芽科尔曼他是博彩平台推荐的教授 剧院 和罗伊·格林在剧院的捐赠椅子, one of the reasons for its resilience is Miller’s subtle complexity.

 “Every time I revisit the play, I'm just amazed at how many different layers are in it. It continues to play the boards because it is very rich,” he says. “你有一百个人, 经常, they'll have a hundred different takes on what they think either the message of the play is, 或者戏剧的哪一部分最吸引他们.”

《博彩平台推荐》,，讲述了威利·洛曼的故事, a traveling salesman from Brooklyn coming to grips with his failure after years of hopeful—some would say delusional—thinking, 几乎赢得了一部戏剧能赢得的所有荣誉, including five Tony Awards and a Pulitzer Prize for Miller.

迈克·尼科尔斯, who directed a revival of the play starring 菲利普·西摩·霍夫曼, 我年轻时就看过它的第一次演出, 并将其效果比作爆炸.

1949年《博彩app推荐》第一次上映时, there were fathers for who the doctor had to be called because they couldn't stop crying,他说 《博彩平台推荐》 in 2012. “The show's effect was people seemed to see themselves.”

在科尔曼, the play may or may not be the quintessential tale of the end of the American dream, 但它可能是毁灭性的. “We see the crushing of a human being in real time on the stage in front of us.”

将戏剧转化为电影

在这方面, the first film version of 《博彩平台推荐》” in 1951 was the occasion of a brief but revealing dispute. 在电影上映之前, Columbia Pictures created a 10-minute short meant to run newsreel-style before the full feature in theaters, as a preemptive salve for the rawness of Miller’s portrayal of Willy Loman.

“Career of a Salesman” was a stiff and laughable bit of propaganda, which replayed and critiqued segments of the feature film, 嘲笑威利的销售才能, while reassuring the audience of the importance of the profession and the guarantee that hard work leads to success. “没有什么, nothing happens in this great country of ours until something is sold,一位讲师严肃地说.

这部短片激怒了米勒. "Why the hell did you make the picture if you're so ashamed of it?” he reportedly asked Columbia studio executives. “Why should anybody not get up and walk out of the 剧院 if ‘Death of a Salesman’ is so outmoded and pointless?" Columbia relented and pulled the short from theaters.

What has made the play so resilient over the decades, 科尔曼说, is the depth that Miller imbued into characters that will be immediately recognizable to the audience—including Willy’s sons, 比夫和哈普, 还有他的妻子, 琳达. “The young high school senior who's got dreams and aspirations, and the parent who also has those dreams and aspirations. That’s pretty much the American story right there,” he says.

“尽管他有那么多缺点”

The fifth and most recent Broadway revival of 《博彩平台推荐》” was a highly regarded run starring Wendell Pierce as Willy and Sharon D. 克拉克饰演琳达. It was the first run of the play on Broadway with Black actors portraying the Loman family, 这为这部剧创造了一个新的维度.

在一次采访中, Pierce noted that in New York City during the 1940s, “伟大的危险, 暴力, oppressive attitudes [and] subtle humiliations were part of daily life for an African American family.”

“It could be just a depressing story of somebody with a pipe dream who's completely unrealistic, 但是威利非常爱他的家人,科尔曼说。. The strained but evident familial bonds run against the riptide of Willy’s demise.

琳达爱他, 男孩们用他们自己的方式爱着他, and the next-door neighbor who drives Willy crazy also cares for him.” In addition to listening to Willy’s woes, the neighbor loans him money.

“Despite all his flaws,” Coleman says, “the actor playing Willy has to show us his charm and heart. In the end, four different people, with very different relationships with him, are there for him.”

Top image: Many notable actors have played the role of Willy Loman on Broadway, 包括(从左至右)布莱恩·丹内希, 菲利普·西摩·霍夫曼, 温德尔·皮尔斯和达斯汀·霍夫曼

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