Throughout its twenty-five year history, Waterdown’s
Village Theatre has produced some of the most memorable
theatre in the Hamilton area. With a host of local
talent and a tradition of passionate creativity, the VT
has established themselves as one of the region’s
premiere companies. This year, it is Arthur Miller’s
epic and devastating drama of a working man’s downfall
that opens the VT’s season and maintains the company’s
legacy of integrity.
Death of a Salesman is one of the most important and
recognized American plays even fifty years after its
premiere. There is a reason why it is still taught in
schools and likened to Shakespearian tragedies. It is
the ultimate realization of the Everyman tradition.
There are no heroes, no villains; just true, human
characters struggling to survive in this harsh world.
A staple figure within the VT since its earliest days,
director Kerry Corrigan has shown that she knows these
important aspects of the play. To make Death of a
Salesman work on the stage, special attention must be
given to the dialogue and flashback transitions,
(realized through Brian Carey’s clever lighting design),
to bring about the full affect of the play’s turmoil.
Corrigan has squeezed every iota of emotion from
Miller’s words, and has coached her actor’s to translate
that emotion by focusing on the details of their
expression, cadence and tone, rather than the intricate |
stage movements laid out by the author. She has created
a genuine character study, which is what Miller
intended, rather than a distracting spectacle.
Mirroring the masterful
direction are masterful performances. The Loman family,
portrayed by Murline Mallette, Mike Wierenga and Andrew
Huisman, are real; it is both wonderful and
heart-wrenching to watch them live out this downward
spiral. Mallette’s Linda is equal parts strength to
compassion and the best and worst aspects of being a
mother and wife are fully realized. With a tempered
restraint uncommon to younger performers, Wierenga plays
Biff with the perfect blending of inner conflict and
pathos while Huisman brings out the subtle hurt within
Happy as he watches his family disintegrate.
It is Bruce Edwards as Willy however, who gives DoS its
spine and heart. This was the role he was born to play
and he brings Willy’s humanity and strife out with a
charm and an authenticity that commands empathy while
tapping into the complex personal and societal issues at
the play’s core.
With a supporting cast where even the smallest part
echoes these exasperating performances, VT’s Death of a
Salesman more than lives up to the mystique behind this
play. It is not just recommended that this production be
seen, it is essential that it be seen. |
Village Theatre presents
a satisfying classic
Death of a Salesman a
masterful exploration
of the limits of the American dream
Brenda Jefferies
Oct 3, 2003
The Flamborough Review
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As Hollywood blockbusters, dumbed-down comedies and
gross-out horror films continue to dominate the marquees at
area cinemas, fans thirsty for some real, grown-up
entertainment plunge into despair: whatever happened to
drama?
After gorging all summer on a buffet of special effects
and high-speed action topped off with a sugary romance or
two, viewers looking for a main course heavy on character,
theme and tension are just about starving.
Luckily, they need look no further than Village Theatre
to sate that appetite.
For their first production of the 2003-2004 season, the
Waterdown-based company tackles the Arthur Miller Classic,
Death of a Salesman. And, under the direction of Kerry
Corrigan, the dramatic entrée is done to perfection.
Tackling the larger-than-life role of Willy Loman is VT
veteran Bruce Edwards.
Aged to portray the sixty-something
traveling salesman,
complete with a graying comb-over, Edwards brings depth and
maturity to the stage. He nails Loman's Brooklyn accent
which, in less capable hands, could easily veer into an
Archie Bunker parody.
The audience in the packed house on the opening weekend
of the play was moved by Edwards's portrayal of the
salesman, which was in turn sweet, abrasive, desperate and
sad.
Cast as Loman's two sons, Andrew Huisman (the
pleasure-seeking Happy) and Mike Wierenga (the rootless
Biff) hold their own, deftly playing off one another and
Edwards to build the father-son, brother-to-brother tensions
that are key to the play's thematic development. As Willy
teeters closer to the edge of the abyss of the American
dream and his family scrambles to prevent his inevitable
fall, the younger actors harness the emotion and
undercurrent of violence and help propel the final act to
its heartbreaking conclusion.
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But, in a play centred on the relationships between
fathers, sons and brothers, it is ultimately the character
of Linda Loman that provides the glue that holds the nuclear
family together.
Murline Mallette brings a steely strength to the Loman
matriarch forced to balance the family finances, play
peacemaker for her husband and sons and keep the illusion of
the American dream from cracking and crumbling in Willy's
hands. Mallette walks a fine line to keep Linda from becoming
either a domineering mother or a nagging extension of her
husband. And she does it gracefully.
Backing up the main characters with solid performances
are Joe Balaz as the Lomans' steady-handed neighbour,
Charley and Tom Tranmer as his nerdy son, Bernard.
Trevor Crane, Melanie Beale, Ethan Edwards, Tom Mays,
Sally Panavas, Nadine Wiegand Deborah Wyman and John Wyman,
with varying levels of experience in community theatre, each
shine in their roles.
Traditionally, the VT set is a small masterpiece of
design, and the minimalist creation for Death is no
exception.
Once again, master carpenter Austin Knowlton is to be
commended for providing a functional, accessible atmosphere
that serves - not overshadows - the dramatic action.
The stage lighting, designed by Brian Carey, is also used
to full effect, solving the geographic and temporal
challenges of presenting action indoors, outdoors and
flashbacks across a span of 20 years.
Life, death, love and deceit make for a pretty heavy
meal, and those looking for a low-cal snack may be better
advised to head to the video store.
But for those who want to experience a full six-course
dinner in two acts, Village Theatre's Death of a Salesman
will provide plenty of food for thought.
Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, produced by Donna
Yates, will be performed at Waterdown's Memorial Hall on
Oct. 2, 3, 4, 9, 10 and 11. For ticket information, call
905-690-7889
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Supporting roles shine in
Death of a Salesman
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By Gary Smith
Special to The Hamilton Spectator
It's probably one of the
greatest plays of the last century. More than anything
written before, or since,
it debunks in the most poetic of
prose the myth of the America Dream.
In its use of symbolic
realism, it defines a dramatic genre that would resonate
throughout the 1950s, surfacing again and again in the
magnificent plays of Arthur Miller and to a possibly greater
extent, Tennessee Williams.
In many ways, Miller's drama
is more complex than
it might appear. Veering in and out of
Willy Loman's troubled head, it makes desperate demands on
those who tackle its weighty themes.
Village Theatre Waterdown's
rather earnest but troubled production of Miller's play
cleaves too desperately toward a soap-opera mentality. There
is
a frequently strident, melodramatic quality to much of
the performance.
Bruce Edwards and Murline
Mallette, normally fine actors with an ear for truth, are at
sea here. He's too melodramatic, substituting rage for
bewilderment. She's too low-key, failing to suggest the
spine of a woman grasping onto life.
Edwards makes an irritating,
unsympathetic Willy, ranting through the more dramatic,
explosive scenes. Mallette's Linda, despite some
heart-warming moments, doesn't project the desperation of a
mother fearful for her family. When she cries "Attention
must be paid," in respect to her husband Willy, it is a
quiet request, not a thunderous, devastating judgment.
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Such troublesome performances
work against the pathos in Miller's play, representing a
serious miscalculation in staging which hurt this
production. Similarly, Mike Wierenga, a normally reliable
actor, has difficulty projecting the repressed anger and
moody insecurity at the core of Biff Loman, Willy's dreamer
of a son. Andrew Huisman as his
ineffectual, sexually promiscuous brother Happy, suggests
little more than a slight veneer of a boy whose self-image
has been hammered out from advertisements suggesting macho
masculinity.
Joe Balaz and John Wyman lack
essential warmth as Charley and Uncle Ben, playing
relentlessly on one obvious and predictable note. And Tom
Tranmer has been encouraged to make Bernard, the Loman's
nerdy next-door-neighbour, too much of a cartoon. In
supporting roles, Tom Mays is excellent as Stanley and
Deborah Wyman is suitably provocative and shrill as Willy's
hotel room conquest.
Designer Lisa Summers has
contributed an effective, moody set that creates appropriate
atmosphere, making good use of the small stage. But director
Kerry Corrigan hasn't managed the "flashback" scenes
effectively enough. There are niggling inconsistencies in
creating the right period mood. Ties are too narrow for the
'30s and '40s setting. Flip-top cigarette boxes were not
then in use.
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Ted Brellisford, the Hamilton Spectator
From left: Bruce Edwards as Willy, Andrew Huisman
as Happy and Murline Mallette as Linda in
Death Of A Salesman, a Village Theatre production |
