Daily News from New York, New York • 365

rr I 1 i a a Daily News. March 30. 1984 BBHeQLaSHBHES 'DEATH OF A SALESMAN' MoiSman shines in a glorious rebirth oSPJlillcr's drama By DOUGLAS WATT DEATH OF A SALESMAN. Drama by Arthur Millar. Wltti Oustln Hoffman.

Kate Raid, John Malkovich, Stephen La no. David odd lesion, Louis Zorich, other. Dlractad by Mlchaal Rudman. Scenery by Ban Edward. Costume by Ruth Moriay.

Lighting by Thomas Skefton, Incidental music by Alex North. At the Broadhurst. family plays "All My Sons," "The Price" and this as Jewish, the idiom is there in the speeches, an Odets like New York Jewish idiom as in such observations as "When a deposit bottle breaks, you can't get your nickel back," and that other bit of nice philosophy "The world's your oyster, but you can't crack it on a mattress," (Willy's injunction to the girl-crazy Happy). And separated by so many years from "Awake and Sing" (also, and oddly, in revival at the moment), the disguised suicide to benefit a beloved son with a $20,000 insurance policy echoes the grandfather's act to favor Ralph in the Odets (that $3,000 being an equally lordly sum in Depression times). It is John Malkovich, though, as that drifting son Biff, so deeply affected still at 34 after having found his father in a Boston hotel room with a buyer's secretary 15 years earlier, who tears us apart with his big scene near the end.

This fine young actor builds his part very slowly, but always surely and intently, until it peaks in magnificence. And Lang couldn't be better as Biff's swinging younger brother, cruelly exposed by Biff as the nonentity he is in the course of Biff's explosive scene. Kate Reid is also excellent as Willy'j patient, loving wife, who expresses Miller's Hoffman rises brilliantly to the part's demands. By now, most of you must know that although the drama covers only the last day of Willy's life, it is infiltrated by scenes from the past leading up to the tragic ending. And, yes, it is tragic, despite lofty literary boundaries attached like limpets to the term tragedy.

For it is Miller's very point that the small man's victimization by circumstance is every bit as tragic as the descent of kings, an argument with which I wouldn't think of quibbling. Plays were longer and fuller 35 years ago, when "Salesman" first appeared, and one may find passages in the first act (the revival is done with a single intermission) slow going at times; in, for example, Willy's casino game and quarrels with Charley (David Huddleston), his good-natured and successful neighbor, or in the boyhood football practice between Willy's sons Biff (John Malkovich) and Happy (Stephen Lang). But these scenes lend added body to a work that keeps gathering momentum until the rending climax, followed by the quiet graveside requiem, like a diminuendo closing a 2Cth Century Tragic Symphony (indeed, Alex North's incidental music, sparing as it is, is excellently employed). Though Miller has always avoided identifying the families in his contemporary BN THE LATE '40s, there were two Broadway openings from which audiences emerged shaken and to disperse silently: Tennessee Williams' masterpiece "A Streetcar Named Desire," and the following season Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman." "Streetcar" has had many embodiments since then, though none of equal stature, while "Salesman" has had relatively few. I am happy this morning to report that the power and compassion of Miller's masterpiece are still capable of moving us deeply in the fine revival that opened last evening at the Broadhurst Dustin Hoffman's small, sharp-featured Willy Loman is far from the large and lumbering victim so unforgettably created by the late Lee J.

Cobb. But Hoffman being the strong, versatile and creative actor he is establishes a new and poignant Willy, less convincing than his predecessor only in his role as a ladies' man away from home. This is, as the plot turns, a crucial part of Willy's personality, but the scene illustrating it is a brief one, and for the rest of the time 1 basic idea that "attention must be paid" to (Continued on page 3) Illustration by TOM LYNN i aagsf.t! mi lainii maumimmmmmmmm- 1 V. t-; At I 1 7: ue i. it ,1 Bf 2---.

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