Panic! Productions’ midsize revival of Arthur Miller’s Death Of A Salesman fails to live up to Salesman’s reputation as the playwright’s greatest achievement due to a combination of inappropriate casting, ineffective direction, and snail-slow pacing on the Colony Theatre stage.

By the time we meet Willy Loman (Joe Cortese), the lifelong salesman has become at age 63 a mere shadow of who he once was—or perhaps better put, of who he believes he once was: a “well-liked” man at the top of the traveling sales game.

 A nearly broken wreck these days, Willy has taken to talking to himself in recollected conversations with his long-suffering wife Linda (Frances Fisher), his now 30something sons Biff (Cronin Cullen) and Happy (Robert Smythe), his well-to-do neighbor Charley (Gary Hudson), Charley’s equally prosperous son-and-heir Bernard (Brian Guest), and most significantly with his deceased brother Ben (Paul Ganus), who achieved a rags-to-riches success in Africa that Willy has been unable to replicate back home.

Not surprisingly, Willy’s bizarre behavior has begun to prey on Linda’s mind, as has his recent car crash, a one-vehicle collision that may not have been as accidental as she would like to think.

Adding to Linda’s family concerns are younger son Happy’s inveterate womanizing (a case of like father, like son) and his lack of any kind of professional success, and Biff’s return to the family nest, her older son having long ago failed to fulfill the potential he showed as a high school athlete.

Talk about a recipe for gut-punching American-style Greek tragedy.

Or so it might be at the Colony with a more inspired director than Mark Blanchard and stars more appropriately cast than Cortese, Fisher, and several of their fellow players.

Willy Loman may have entered his 60s, and Linda may be edging toward the big 6-0, but neither could be called elderly, and the Loman tragedy loses potency when Willy comes across already a decade beyond what most companies in the late-1940s-early-1950s would have considered mandatory retirement age.

And though both Willy and Linda may be showing signs of getting on in years, I can’t help wondering if much of the shakiness in Cortese and Fisher’s performances is unintentional. (It’s perhaps not without reason that the six actors who originated Willy Loman on Broadway in its debut production and five subsequent revivals ranged in age from 38 to 61, with an average age of just 50, given the dynamism and stamina required of any actor gutsy enough to tackle the role.)

Best among supporting performances are those delivered by dynamic, charismatic newcomers Cullen and Smythe as Biff and Happy, the gym-buffed duo best in their scenes together but done no favors when sharing the stage with their elders; Ganus as Willy’s urbane globetrotting brother Ben, who pops up again and again in Willy’s addled brain; Hudson, effective as next-door neighbor Charlie; and Michelle Jasso, cool sophistication in her cameo as the sultry Miss Forsythe.

Guest, on the other hand, overplays Bernard’s adolescent pep and is downright bizarre as waiter Stanley; Jennifer Olsberg turns her three characters (Letta, the Woman, and Jenny) into caricatures; and Chris Ulfand is woefully miscast as Willy’s presumably much younger boss.

It doesn’t help that director Blanchard’s blocking is frequently awkward or that he could do more to make it clear that Willy’s hallucinations are figments of his imagination and not simply flashbacks, and pacing is so slow in the play’s final scenes that a show that ought to run 2 hours and 45 minutes clocks in at over 3.

Production design is satisfactory (set and lighting by Justin Huen, costumes by Vicki Conrad, video projections by Fritz Davis, and sound design by Robert Arturo Ramirez and Christian “Gama” Franco), but director Blanchard could surely have found a way to avoid lugging set pieces on and off again and again in scenes taking place stage right.

Death Of A Salesman is produced by Paul Panico, Panic! Productions. Karen (Kaz) Osborne is stage manager and Asa Fris is assistant stage manager. Sandra Kuker is publicist.

Just a half-dozen years ago, Rob Morrow and Lee Darlington dazzled as Willy and Linda at Santa Monica’s Ruskin Group Theatre. Joe Cortese and Frances Fisher, unfortunately, mostly fizzle.

Colony Theatre, 555 North Third Street, Burbank. Through January 26. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 7:30. Sundays at 3:30. Also Saturday January 25 at 3:30.
www.colonytheatre.org

–Steven Stanley
January 16, 2025
Photos: Billy W. Bennight II

Tags: Arthur Miller, Colony Theatre, Los Angeles Theater Review, Panic! Productions