Word: loman
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Life is sweet in Willy Loman's front yard. Willy is a top-notch traveling salesman, his son Biff is an up-and-coming high school football hero, and his wife and second son stand basking in the warmth of their American Dream. It's too bad we have to go inside...
...shocking drama about Willy Loman and his family's eventual realization that he is a life failure begins this weekend at Leverett House in the Old Library. Performances are Friday and Saturday at 7 p.m. and on Saturday...
Hoffman carefully modulates his five scenes, using familiar but effective gestures: the shy grin, the hunch of the shoulders, the sudden stare, the deliberate monotonous thud to denote anger. His performance, anything but a star turn, is intelligent, confident and touching. Hoffman brings to mind his ingratiating Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman or, even more strongly, his film work in Straw Dogs as a quiet man driven beyond endurance into mayhem. The show never stints on the virulent anti-Semitism of Shakespeare's world, although Hall employs subtle staging and lighting cues to mollify modern spectators' disquiet...
...Willy Loman knew how important it was to be well liked. Since Eisenhower won with the primitivist slogan "I Like Ike," Americans seem to require a pleasing affability from their Commander in Chief. Under Ronald Reagan, geniality was raised to an art form; the President became the nation's surrogate grandfather...
Like any Hollywood animal, Olmos thinks on a grand scale, in broad, confident strokes. It is not inconceivable that he might play Hamlet or Kowalski. Or he might take on heroes like Coriolanus or Willy Loman. But consider this option: suppose he decided to develop a movie, Spielberg-style, about a Hispanic family in the suburbs, coping the American way. Instead of a tragic figure, he would be playing Eddie Average. (Then perhaps Eddie II and III). It would be Close Encounters of a fresh new kind, and the vast audience watching the melodrama might also start to recognize...