First let me note there are major, major spoilers in this review.
The bottom line is that there’s nothing particularly wrong with ACT Contemporary Theatre’s world première of Katie Forgette’s Mrs. Loman is Leaving. It occupies a space that has been a staple of US theatre for many, many years. It’s fairly light and it’s one of those backstage theatre pieces (this one a new production at a tiny, tiny theatre, the Teacup Theatre, of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman). Well, we’ve all seen that sort of thing on both sides of the pond, usually at the expense of amateur actors and community theatre. Some of them have been truly great, others less so. This one delivers what it promises, so I suppose that’s fair enough.
As a light comedy, it delivers. Julie Beckman’s direction begins engaging with the stereotypes that are usually found in such pieces right from the get-go: the frantic stage manager, the senior actor who forgets his lines, the director—well, of course, he’s gay and of course, he’s large and neurotic, and of course he’s been accused of sexually harassing a young actor (he’s Southern, Sam tells us, in which touching might be confusing to others, something that rings true with my experience of the Deep South). The rumours that follow Sam make this production of Death of Salesman key to reviving his lost career—sadly, the producer turns out to be a brilliant lawyer but an awful producer. Of course, the leading lady is facing personal issues: her husband is coming back to town but not to see her. He’s got a girlfriend, and the husband is one of the set pieces of the theatre, the offstage character who is key to the action but never actually shows. (This play has two of these: the husband leaving his wife and the understudy who never shows to do her job.)
The first act is a fast-moving combo of exposition and rapid-fire gags, in a space in which the acoustics of theatre-in-the-round mean you miss every other joke, something I heard mentioned by other audience members as I left. Mostly, though, it is a set-up for the second act.
The second act moves to what I think was meant to be heady material: the premise is that US theatre is built on the bodies of the quiet women who support their husbands no matter what. Willie Loman is the great tragic figure of the past, who’s ordinary. He’s not a king, not anyone important, not able to recognise that he’s ordinary and unimportant. He’s done his job, he’s done it for decades, and, as we all know, commits suicide so that his family won’t lose their house.
But behind him—and this is the key question for the show’s plot—is a woman who won’t give up on her husband, though she probably should.
The second act is where this gets questioned: why doesn’t she (Linda Loman herself, not the actress playing her, very ably played in turn by real world actor Alexandra Tavares) yell out? Why doesn’t, Joanne asks, why doesn’t Linda say anything? Why doesn’t she just leave? The contention is that Linda is quiet to a fault, mouse-like, stands by and watches her husband destroy himself and his family, says yes to him when maybe she should have said no. This is not quite fair to Miller’s work—it ignores the epilogue in which Linda breaks out of a traditional fourth wall production and speaks directly to the audience, reminding us “attention must be paid.” Linda’s right, it ought to have been, but this play (Mrs. Loman) uses really hackneyed means to reach the same exact conclusion.
I mean that the cast is, as I mentioned above, all stereotypes (though all very well played by the actual actors). When Joanne refuses to play Linda, to demand that her understudy take over for her, things start to move a bit, but then they pretty quickly bog down. It turns out (this is a big deal) that the senior actor isn’t senile, he’s actually been drinking (oh, gasp, oh horror, how moderne) peyote-infused tea. He’s high as hell, and when he and Joanne switch cups of tea, it’s Joanne who’s high and George who’s brilliant and who saves the day. After that, of course, the New York critic (another offstage character) gives it a rave review because he thinks it's art—and so the current company just repackages the show as a reworking of Classic Hit Number One, not a failed attempt at its production.
No one in the audience seemed to be bothered by accusations of sexual harassment. No one seemed to mind that, till we find out George is on hallucinogens, he’s the usual old actor who jams lines together as best he can (think Henry in The Fantasticks). Those things are just part of the machinery running along. The audience, the real one, is aging. They were there for Neil Simon’s The Star-Spangled Girl, they were there for Death of a Salesman, but this new play has seemed to forget the danger of Miller’s All My Sons or, for that matter, many of the strong women in Tennessee Williams’s works. It’s not the fault of the company itself. In November, ACT is putting on a new plays festival which is pretty clearly not business as usual with lots of non-Anglo names, but this one? It would probably work better as a musical.