#Death of a sales man reader series

The audience was momentarily stunned in silence, followed by a tidal wave of crying and sobbing. “And it is really true (as theatrical legend has it) that when the curtain fell, there was no applause.

“My aunt, a college freshman English major who was living at home, told me that when my grandparents returned home from that performance, my grandmother’s cheeks were smeared with black smudges - her eyeliner had run due to her crying so hard,” he wrote. Most people felt a strong personal connection with the play that was evident in their impassioned, thoughtful commentary.Īnother reader told of how his grandparents attended the first public performance of the play, during its Philadelphia tryout. We heard from actors and directors, from teachers and students, even from a few people who made their living as Willy did, riding on their own smiles and shoeshines. More than 600 comments were posted in response to the series.

#Death of a sales man reader series

As the enthusiastic response to “Life of a ‘Salesman,’ ” a series devoted to the play on the Web site of The New York Times, made clear, “Death of a Salesman” remains a touchstone work of American drama that speaks as powerfully to readers and viewers today as it did to audiences in 1949, when Miller’s dissection of the moral rot at the heart of an average American family left audiences stunned by the force of its perceptions. Hers was hardly an unlikely response from a theatergoer confronting for the first time - or for that matter the third or fourth or fifth - Arthur Miller’s often harrowing portrait of a man drowning in his own delusions.īut simple sadness at Willy Loman’s plight should only be a fleeting reaction to Miller’s masterwork. Thus opined a woman at a recent performance of the new Broadway revival of “Death of a Salesman” after the curtain fell on the first act.