The first Broadway production to cast Black actors as the Loman family stars Wendell Pierce and Sharon D. Clarke in powerhouse performances.
In the new Broadway revival of “Death of a Salesman,” Wendell Pierce’s powerhouse performance firmly identifies Willy Loman as a tragic hero for these modern times. It’s a searing portrait of a working-class man who has struggled all his life to achieve. Not a man who works with his hands, or on an assembly line, but a man — a Black man — who goes to work in a suit and is welcomed wherever he goes by clients who greet him with a grin and a handshake. As a traveling salesman, he has dignity, respect and a shot at the American Dream, so long as he maintains his footing on the ladder of success — and pulls up his two sons behind him. If Willy should lose his job, he’ll lose that dignity, that respect, that place in society which defines him as a successful Black man in a white man’s world.
There’s no doubt that casting a Black actor as Willy Loman (for the first time on Broadway, no less) adds a deeper dimension to this monumental role. And who knows what other, future interpreters might find in the character. It’s worth remembering that back when Arthur Miller’s now-celebrated American tragedy originally opened on Broadway, many people were unsettled by the floundering character of Willy.
