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Director Paige Rattray has made an interesting choice in the opening moments of Sydney Theatre Company鈥檚 new production of Arthur Miller鈥檚 Death of a Salesman. She provides us with a narrator (Brigid Zengeni) who directly addresses the audience with a kind of 鈥渧oiceover鈥� derived from Miller鈥檚 wonderful original stage directions.

This is an impactful decision, as it overlays the set with the dream-like visions of reality with which the play is so much concerned. David Fleischer鈥檚 well-executed set design provides us with an enormous, echoing school assembly hall that is well past its sell-by date. This empty space is the screen against which the Loman family鈥檚 faded hopes of schoolboy success are projected, and where they have come to die.

The most telling sentence from Miller鈥檚 opening stage directions describes the house in which the Lomans live: 鈥淎n air of the dream clings to the place, a dream rising out of reality鈥�. This elusive instruction from Miller is a tough brief for any set designer. But it is succinctly evocative of the terrible prison into which the Loman family have slowly drifted, a prison constructed out of ill-founded hopes and a cruelly competitive world.

Perhaps unusually, the stage directions for Death of a Salesman are fascinating in their own right. So it is an unexpected pleasure of this production to have them foregrounded and made use of in this way.

Working in the middle of the 20th century, Miller鈥檚 plays arrive towards the exhausted end of a long tradition of realist dramatic writing in which stage directions had increasingly dominated the page, with the dialogue sometimes seeming to take a backseat. From Ibsen鈥檚 work in the late 19th century onwards, playwrights tried to ensure that the worlds they presented on the modern stage were as fully realised as possible.

But for Miller (as for his mid-century American contemporary, Tennessee Williams) the promise of realism had frayed alongside American expectations of 20th century prosperity.

The worlds that they both create through increasingly complex and demanding stage directions are worlds in which dreams clash with reality, worlds that neither we nor their protagonists are quite able to grasp.

Willy Loman, the 63-year-old travelling salesman of the play鈥檚 title, is never able to live in the present. His past keeps walking through the door. He is exhausted, 鈥渢ired to the death鈥�, unable to escape the memories that keep him trapped, hoping for success that has never 鈥� will never 鈥� come true.

Rattray and Fleischer, with the aid of Clemence Williams鈥� powerful score, make great use of the deep Roslyn Packer stage to bring this increasingly nightmarish experience to life.

The play centres on the four members of the Loman nuclear family. Jacek Koman captures Willy鈥檚 mercurial temperament, particularly the dangerously rapid shifts in his temperament: manic optimism, frustration at a world that has disappointed him, and foolish nostalgia.

Helen Thomson鈥檚 portrayal of Linda Loman, his wife, is the standout performance of the production. Thomson has found a pathos and a strength to the role that is not always realised in performance.

Linda Loman鈥檚 defiant defence of her husband, despite all his flaws, is the moral centre of the play. 鈥淗e鈥檚 a human being鈥�, she tells her sons, 鈥渁nd a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid.鈥� Linda鈥檚 claims are the claims of the play: that an ordinary man鈥檚 suffering is worth something beyond its dollar value. At the very least, his life is worth having a play written about it. Thomson鈥檚 superb performance holds this heart of the play for us.

Callan Colley as the younger son, Hap Loman, does a great job of living up to another of Miller鈥檚 demanding stage directions. 鈥淪exuality,鈥� we are told, 鈥渋s like a visible colour on him, or a scent that many people have discovered.鈥�

Josh McConville鈥檚 performance of Biff, older brother and a faded high school jock, is the other stand out. His awareness that he can鈥檛 live up to his father鈥檚 dream that he will turn high school adulation into ever-increasing success provides the key journey of the play鈥檚 narrative, and McConville鈥檚 typically physical performance captures well Biff鈥檚 frustrations.

The director鈥檚 decisions here 鈥� to use the narrator, to ask the cast to use American accents, and also to populate the stage with extraneous cast members 鈥� are all carefully considered. They all point towards the theatrical nature of the experience.

Her choices provide us with the sense that, even though it is set in the kitchen of an ordinary house, what we are watching is not a slice of realism at all. Rather, it is an understanding of our lives as hemmed in by 鈥� controlled by 鈥� dreams and delusions.

Death of a Salesman plays at the Roslyn Packer Theatre until December 22, 2021. Banner image of actor聽Jacek Koman playing Willy Loman by Prudence Upton.聽

This review by Dr聽Huw Griffiths, senior lecturer in English, was first published in The Conversation as聽