We round up the reviews for the Young Vic’s production of Arthur Miller’s classic play….
The Guardian: **** “mixing the socially specific and the dreamily phantasmagoric, depicts the duality at the heart of Miller’s memory-play with exceptional clarity.”
The Times: ***** “Audience is easily sold on fresh revival of an old great”
The Telegraph: ***** “But it has never been staged the way Marianne Elliott presents it at the Young Vic.”
The Independent: **** “Sharon D Clarke has her customary impressive presence, and when she turns on the scorn at her responsibility-shirking sons in arguably the best scene in the play, there’s simply no-one like her.”
WhatsonStage: ***** “a transformative, brilliant staging which offers a dazzling new look at a dazzling play, demonstrating once again that Miller’s words, written in 1949, can speak across ages, times and cultures.”
Exeunt Magazine: “In many ways, it’s actually a very straight production of a classic, right down to how it makes use of Miller’s cited blue and orange lighting. There’s a definite gloss to the staging, the kind of gloss Sam Mendes’ The Ferryman also had. It’s a West End-ready sheen that lets you know: this is a high quality production of a high quality drama.”
Time Out: ***** “What really distinguishes the production, though, is the extraordinary sequences set in the depths of Willy’s mind, his guilt-stricken reveries going back to the high school sporting glory days of favourite son Biff (Arinzé Kene), and his agonies over his fleeting connection with his own elder brother, Uncle Ben (Joseph Mydell).”
Evening Standard: ***** “Co-directors Marianne Elliott and Miranda Cromwell aren’t the first to make the Lomans an African-American family. But this choice gives an extra frisson to the story of their ambitions and disappointments in Forties Brooklyn. And while this isn’t as bold a reinvention as Elliott’s recent radical take on Stephen Sondheim’s Company, she and Cromwell have crafted something fresh, compassionate and ultimately devastating.”
Broadway World: ***** “A thoughtful, rich and compassionate revitalisation of a timeless tragedy.”
Londonist: **** “Wendell Pierce’s Willy Loman is at turns jovial and cantankerous, every bit as mercurial as the script demands.”
British Theatre Guide: ” this is a worthy production of a classic with a slightly different slant. While this latest incarnation, which stretches to 3 hours, may not quite compare with the very greatest versions in the past, it grips throughout and should be compulsory viewing for Arthur Miller fans as well as anybody with an interest in social history.”
Death of a Salesman continues to play at the Young Vic Theatre until the 13th July.