Willy Loman, meet Donald Trump
'Death of a Salesman,' 'The Adding Machine,' 'Dragon Mama,' 'Sex, Lies and Harold Pinter' and more
Almost immediately after America’s current war began, I posted an Angeles Stage in which I noted that Antaeus Theatre’s revival of Arthur Miller’s “All My Sons” was suddenly more relevant because of its reflections on the American “sons” who fought in World War II.
Today, Angeles Stage is appearing after last Saturday’s enormous nationwide “No Kings” protests against that war and other Trumpian projects. Has the revival of Miller’s “Death of a Salesman,” which opened over the weekend at east Pasadena’s A Noise Within, also become newly relevant?
No — but only because “Death of a Salesman” is almost always relevant in the USA, especially in the Trump era.
Trump is an exemplar of the notion that “personality” is the essential quality of selling yourself in America, even if there is no substance behind the style. Willy Loman in “Salesman” also subscribes to that notion, but his personality is beginning to fail him — as is Trump’s, with his ever-increasing incoherence.
We hear Willy’s memories of how he used to be a great salesman, but we never learn exactly what product he has been trying to sell. Of course, if he had inherited the money that Trump inherited (the president’s primary childhood home in NYC’s Queens had 23 rooms), Loman (as in “low-man”) probably wouldn’t be shlepping from city to city as a salesman. Indeed, he could already have retired — but he also would be much less dramatically interesting.
“Death of a Salesman” is set in Brooklyn, the somewhat less affluent borough just south of Queens. Julia Rodriguez-Elliott’s staging at A Noise Within employs Brooklyn accents more consistently than most of the “Salesman” revivals that I remember. Frederica Nascimento’s set and Ken Booth’s lighting clearly establish the play’s locale — a small house being shadowed by encroaching apartment buildings.
I sometimes forget that in “Death of a Salesman,” time shifts often in both directions, and in this production the windows and walls can also move. But nothing becomes confusing.
Rodriguez-Elliott assembled a flawless cast. As Willy, co-artistic director Geoff Elliott looks exactly the right age and size of Willy and inhabits every nuance of his descent. Deborah Strang plays Will’s stalwart wife Linda with a solicitous but unblinking gaze.
The one newcomer to A Noise Within who won’t be soon forgotten is the riveting David Kepner as the Lomans’ older son Biff, recently arrived from a sojourn in the wider world. He’s now uncomfortably torn between his own hopes and those of his parents. Ian Littleworth plays Biff’s younger brother Happy, who finds urban night life considerably happier than any alternative.
In one line near the end of the play, Willy — while speaking to his own vision of his much more daring and successful brother Ben (David Nevell) — regrets that he might “stand here the rest of my life ringing up a zero.”
In other words, he now sees himself as Mr. Zero. Maybe he should be talking instead to the original Mr. Zero, from Elmer Rice’s play “The Adding Machine,” which the Actors’ Gang is currently reviving at its home in Culver City.
An expressionist classic from 1923, “The Adding Machine” roars back to life — and death — in its first act. After the arrival of a newfangled adding machine, Mr. Zero’s computing skills lose their value, and he loses his job. The formerly stolid Zero (Pierre Adeli) violently overreacts to his layoff and ends up on Death Row.
It’s difficult not to observe that adding machines (AM?) were a forerunner of today’s AI, in turns of possible job loss. In fact, sales jobs also now have digital components that Willy Loman couldn’t gave imagined.
The second act of “Adding Machine,” set in an Elysian Fields afterlife, is more subtle but has its own memorable moments — though it could benefit from additional editing. Still, Cihan Sahin’s staging is almost as evocative as Rodriguez-Elliott’s “Death of a Salesman.” By the way, Charles McNulty of the LA Times, who had not yet seen A Noise Within’s latest, also noticed a resemblance between the two plays. He wrote that “like Willy Loman,” Zero is “enraged that his boss feels like he can eat the orange and then just throw away the peel — with impunity.”
Circling co-productions
Looking for another example of a job that has been automated out of existence? How about elevator operators? Dietrich Smith’s adaptation of Franz Kafka’s “Amerika, or the Man Who Disappeared,” an Open Fist/Circle X co-production at Atwater Village Theatre, vividly illustrates that extinct gig, thanks in part to eye-catching animations of hotel elevators by John R. Dilworth.
A warning, however: this is a three-act play, with two intermissions, and the seating is uncomfortably cramped. It’s adapted from Kafka’s unfinished story of what early 20th-century America might be like for a fumbling single immigrant whose one rich relative in the US proves unreliable. But Kafka himself never crossed the ocean before he died in 1924. “Amerika” seems somewhat abstract and speculative, compared to the more fact-based narratives that might be told about immigrants of that era.
Circle X is also a co-producer of Weston Gaylord’s “Octopus’s Garden,” along with Boston Court and Outside In Theatre, at Boston Court in Pasadena. Two scientists are studying an octopus (played by a puppet) in a tank. They record sounds from the octopus and agree that it’s unquestionably the most exciting music ever composed. They listen to this music through headphones. We can’t hear it. Still, we’re supposed to take the word of these non-musicians, who probably lack the time to listen to a wide range of music, about how transporting these sounds are. No thanks. But thanks for Emory Royston’s puppetry.
‘Kim’s,’ ‘Spamalot,’ ‘Dragon Mama’
The Ahmanson Theatre is currently hosting a touring version of Ins Choi’s “Kim’s Convenience,” starring the playwright as a Korean immigrant who now owns a Canadian convenience store. It’s odd that a dramatic concept that already had a run as a Netflix sitcom should now be at the larger of Center Theatre Group’s two Music Center venues — while “Here Lies Love,” a bigger musical, is in the smaller Mark Taper Forum (I discussed it last month). “Kim’s Convenience” still feels like a family sitcom. I’d prefer to see the actors’ close-ups, on Netflix.
This is just a guess, but the booking might have something to do with the fact that LA has the largest Korean-American population in the US, including a Koreatown not that far from the Music Center. Still, is there no newer Korean-related play that hasn’t already had a run on Netflix? By the way, this isn’t even the Greater LA stage premiere of “Kim’s Convenience” — a production of it occurred at Laguna Playhouse in 2022.
Meanwhile, a touring “Spamalot” is at the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood. It’s the 2005 musical, by Eric Idle and John Du Prez, based on the 1975 movie “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” — with a few recent updates. I laughed more during the second act than in the first. But throughout there were some lines in which the pronunciation was difficult to understand. The theater is too big for the subtleties of some of the satire — again, as with “Kim’s Convenience,” I probably would prefer to either watch a screen version or the stage version in a smaller venue.
Geffen Playhouse is presenting “Dragon Mama,” in its smaller Westwood space. I liked this Sara Porkalob (she/they) solo more than her “Dragon Lady”, produced in the Geffen’s larger space in 2024. Perhaps the intimacy of the smaller space made a difference. I recovered more quickly from the excessive number of characters that she/they plays, distinguishing them from each other with quick changes in voice and posture. This one focuses on Porkalob’s own mother in the Pacific Northwest US; it has hardly any of the references to the family’s Filipina-American past that were much more prevalent in the previous production.
‘Sex, Lies…’ and more in smaller spaces
“Sex, Lies and Harold Pinter,” at the Odyssey Theatre in West LA, consists of two one-acts. First up is “Party Time” (1991), depicting a posh party set against the background of unseen military activities happening somewhere offstage. Then Susan Priver and Ron Bottitta appear in “The Lover” (1963), an elaborate and amusing role-playing comedy between a husband and wife. Jack Heller sets both plays “in the present” and directs a cast of nine in “Party Time” and the cast of only two in “The Lover,” but “The Lover” evokes a lot more laughs than “Party Time.”
Jackie Sibblies Drury’s “Fairview,” at Rogue Machine on Melrose, is supposedly set before a party, as an African-American family prepares for a birthday. However, following the first scene, the movements of the entire first scene are silently repeated onstage while unseen white characters are heard discussing what’s happening. Then the white actors finally show up as previously unseen characters in the celebration. Finally, the granddaughter character invites a few white members of the audience to literally join the party group on the stage — which they do, although they aren’t invited to say anything. Scratching your head? I was. But the play won a Pulitzer Prize. McNulty of the Times, who saw an earlier version, recently wrote here about why that other production was better.
“The Best Boarding House in Delaware,” at Electric Lodge in Venice, is a moderately entertaining theater-macabre example by Marja-Lewis Ryan. A gruff Heidi Sulzman is in the central role of the landlady. It was “inspired,” if that’s the right word, by the story of Dorothea Puente, who was a Californian. I don’t understand why it’s now set in Delaware — unless the author feels that audiences might expect such activity to occur in California, but not in tiny Delaware.
“The Last Days of Judas Iscariot,” Stephen Adly Guirgis’ overstretched purgatorial courtroom play, has been produced often in LA, but this latest Theatre 68 production in North Hollywood has opened just in time for Good Friday and Easter. Director Leif Gantvoort’s set design is impressive, but with 20 actors and the set on a small stage, the audience seating is so uncomfortably crowded (at least above the first row) that I hesitate to recommend enduring it for its three hours (including one intermission).
“The Taming,” produced by Little Fish Theatre in Redondo Beach, is a political farce by the prolific Lauren Gunderson. Unfortunately, this 2013 opus seems dated now and occasionally inexplicable, including its apparent intent to reflect three of the characters in “Taming of the Shrew” — even though all of the roles are for women. One is a beauty-pageant contestant who somehow kidnaps leftist and rightist activists in order to rewrite the US Constitution for its era — which is to say pre-Trump 2013.
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