Death of a Salesman

Went to the Belvoir production of “Death of a Salesman” the other night. Despite two sold out seasons, the play had triggered a controversy over the removal of the final scene of the play and the changing of an essential plot line. As an actor and a dramaturg, I did not want to jump to the conclusion too quickly before I have a chance to see the production, especially when we are talking about one of the most important plays by Arthur Miller in the modern world.  

In Belvoir’s production of “Death of a Salesman” a car replaced the house on the stage. All the actions took place in a garage like convertible empty space. Yes there is nothing but a car on the stage. This is fair enough as the car was pivotal to the plot because Willy was trying to stop travelling across states for his job. Also empty multi-purpose space provides a lot more flexibility in terms of how the stage can be used without limiting the imagination of the audience.

The play then pretty much followed the plot line of the script. Things were being tweaked here and there to suit the setting of the stage and most of them were tackled smartly. Then came the last scene of the play (spoiler alert if you haven’t read or seen the play) when Willy gassed himself to death in the car. In the production that I saw Belvoir already reinstated the final funeral scene as per instruction from the agency handling the rights of the play. The curtain came down and some of the audiences were applauding, which was a bit awkward, before the rest of the cast showed up in black and delivered the last scene. There was not much staging, just actors standing there delivering the lines and walked off one by one.

Watching this unfolding on the stage I understood why Belvoir decided to cut the final scene. The way they handled the death of Willy made the final scene completely contradictory to the previous scene. In the original text, it was implied that Willy killed himself but there was no proof thus the insurance company paid out the compensation to the family. However, with Belvoir’s way of handling Willy’s death, there is no way that a pay out would be provided because it was an obvious suicide. Under such circumstance, I can understand why Belvoir decided to take out the last scene, because everything would not make sense.

However, this leads to the question of how much liberty do we have when reinterpreting classic materials. Easily said, “Death of the Salesman” is one of the most influential plays of the modern times and each scene was closely linked to each other. In Belvoir’s case, the decision to completely remove the final scene to accommodate the treatment of Willy’s death raised an important question – is this a pure artistic vision or are they tampering with the canon of the material? For me there is a main difference between the two and the most important consideration is whether the “vision” compromises the material.   In Belvoir’s case, as good as the vision was, it compromised the material. If it is not “Death of a Salesman” maybe they can still get away with it. But then when it comes to a prominent play as such, I am not surprised the agency poses threats to Belvoir on their rights to use their materials in the future, because they are responsible for keeping the integrity of the material no matter what. There are still people who haven’t read or seen the play (one of my friends who went with me was one of them), so it is the duty of the agency to make sure that everyone who went to see the production see it as it was originally written and intended, disregarding whatever artistic visions were applied.

This might just be a storm in a teacup but this does serves as a reminder to a lot of people that when being creative, they still need to consider the material in full. Having said that I still enjoyed my night out with “Death of a Salesman”