Considering all the years I've spent in this terrible, terrible occupation, it should come as little surprise to anyone that one of my favourite plays is Arthur Miller's Death Of A Salesman. If he'd ever written a sequel - say Torture & Mutilation Of A Salesman, I'd have been its biggest fan. But the truth is I loved DOAS long before I began swimming with sharks. It's one of those plays they get you to study in High School, and rightly so. In many ways it's a cautionary tale about the danger of ambition, and about pursuing a career based solely around the acquisition of wealth and material possessions when, obviously, true happiness lies elsewhere. Willie Loman isn't a likeable hero, but he is a hugely sympathetic one - especially as portrayed by the superb Philip Jackson in the recent production at the West Yorkshire Playhouse.
It's a good few years since I last saw Death Of A Salesman, but this time it really kicked me in the balls. Perhaps it's the sort of play that hurts more as you get older, or perhaps this was just a really powerful production. Willy Loman is a man whose whole life is built around the self-delusion that he is popular, that he is successful, that he is "well-liked"... when in truth he's a man long past his prime, if he ever really had one. How long can such a man continue to fool his family, his friends - even (especially) himself? It makes you question your own sense of self. I never consider myself particularly "well-liked", I certainly never consider myself any kind of success... but there are many other ways in which we fool ourselves about our worth in this world, or how others see us.
I cried at the end of this performance, but was I crying for Willie Loman... or all of us?
