Lefty Misread of 'Death of a Salesman' Buries Meaning

NEW YORK — Seven times a week, audiences fill the 1,600-seat Winter Garden, one of Broadway’s largest venues, to see Nathan Lane, 70, an ornament of contemporary theater, spend almost three hours strenuously portraying the last day of a lost man: Willy Loman, a salesman. “Death of a Salesman” is grand despite what playwright Arthur Miller was thinking in 1949. This durable achievement of American dramaturgy will grip audiences in 2049 and beyond because Miller’s art survived his politics. A pastiche of banal leftist cultural criticisms, they were and are irrelevant to the play’s shattering depiction of something timeless, not context-dependent: the pathos of a despairing individual whose dreams exceed his capacities. Read Full Article »