Attention must be paid: 'Death of a Salesman' opens this week at Palm Beach Dramaworks

It is an impressive measure of Arthur Miller’s achievement in his landmark 1949 play "Death of a Salesman" that the name of its central character has entered the lexicon as a synonym for the downside of the American Dream.

This Friday, Palm Beach Dramaworks brings the story of Willy Loman to its Clematis Street stage, in a production starring veteran actor Rob Donohoe as the 63-year-old salesman with 34 years in the job who finds that his popularity-based gospel of success is no longer helping him.

“Be liked, and you’ll never want,” Loman tells his sons, Biff (Michael Shenefelt) and Happy (Ty Fanning). But that is before he gets fired by his manager, who in a particularly cruel twist is the son of the man who hired Loman in the first place.

The play shifts repeatedly between the past and the present, as Willy’s mental state unravels, and he contemplates suicide. The future of his sons is especially important to him, but they have embarked on directionless lives, partly driven by Willy’s expansive dreams for them and their inability to achieve them. The one unshakeable source of support comes from his wife, Linda (played by Helena Ruoti), who gets to speak the play’s most famous lines while reprimanding Biff for disrespecting his father:

“I don’t say he’s a great man,” she begins. “Willy Loman never made a lot of money. His name was never in the paper. He’s not the finest character that ever lived. But he’s a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid.”

Miller’s play was seen almost immediately as a major event in the American theater, and it went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for drama as well as a Tony award for best play. In an essay about the work for the New York Times, Miller wrote that “I think the tragic feeling is evoked in us when we are in the presence of a character who is ready to lay down his life, if need be, to secure one thing — his sense of personal dignity.”

The Dramaworks production is directed by J. Barry Lewis. Also in the cast are Nathalie Andrade, Harrison Bryan, John Campagnuolo, William Hayes, Hannah Hayley, Matthew W. Korinko, Tom Wahl, and Gracie Winchester.

The show opens Friday, with specially priced previews on Wednesday and Thursday. Performances continue through April 14. Tickets for the previews are $69, and opening night is $104. All other shows are priced at $89. Student tickets are available for $15 with valid ID, and patrons under 40 pay $40 with a photo ID.

The Don and Ann Brown Theatre is at 201 Clematis St. in downtown West Palm Beach. For more information or to buy tickets, call 561-514-4042, ext. 2, or visit palmbeachdramaworks.org.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: 'Death of a Salesman' opens this week at Palm Beach Dramaworks