The RSC's Thoroughly Modern Miller

With 2015 marking the centenary of Arthur Miller’s birth, it was inevitable that a fresh crop of revivals of the great American playwright’s works would spring up across the theatre world. Last year saw Yael Farber direct a production of The Crucible, staged in the round at the Old Vic and starring Richard Armitage, while Ivo Van Hoe brought _A View from the Bridge _back to life in a startlingly minimalist production that moved from the Young Vic to the Wyndham’s Theatre for early 2015.

This year, a touring production of _All My Sons _featuring an all-black cast made the rounds, while the RSC opened a revival of Miller’s most enduringly acclaimed piece, _A Death of a Salesman _at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon. That production now transfers to the Noel Coward Theatre in the West End proper (replacing Shakespeare in Love) for a ten-week run.

The first thing that – naturally – catches your eye when entering the theatre is the set. The interior of a two-storey house squats centre-stage, the beams supporting the ground floor visible, as if the whole house had been cut in two. The house is small, compact, and overshadowed by the vast number of identical houses that loom over it in an imposing tableau. Rows and rows of terraced flats define the sides and rear of the stage, some with lights shining through their windows, suggesting a scale far beyond the one measly house we have been granted access to.

There are moments where it can feel like this is a show that has been scaled up for a full-blown West End stage – the decision to use gauze and what appears to be projection, to allow the backdrop to subtly shift in appearance during certain scenes, inevitably leads to moments where the entire thing becomes almost transparent, but it’s a forgivable (and understandable) sin. Yes, you can occasionally see the construction holding up the structure, but the play does such a magnificent job of focusing your attention on the actors’ performances that’s it hard to mind too much.

"The staging of Death of a Salesman is an incredibly straight-forward affair."

The discussion of staging proves interesting in the context of the other two, West End productions of Miller’s plays. _The Crucible’_s set was sparse, enough to evoke the setting and little more, and being in the round meant the actors’ performances were being viewed from all angles. _A View from the Bridge_went even further, dropping almost all set entirely in favour of a knee-high glass bench, with audience on three sides. No props beyond a pair of shoes. And yet, still utterly absorbing. By comparison, this production of _Death of a Salesman_is an incredibly straight-forward affair. Where this show gets interesting is the text itself.

The story is that of Willy Loman, a down-on-his-luck, exhausted salesman. Returning home from an abortive sales trip following a near-miss car accident, he discovers his estranged, unsuccessful sons have both come to stay, reuniting their old family unit. As Willy’s mind wanders, he begins to talk to himself, often flashing back to moments in his son’s youth, when the world lay at their feet and success seemed certain. It’s in these flashbacks that the play is allowed to quietly tug at the rug beneath the audience’s feet, as subtle (and the odd unsubtle) lighting changes fire off, and the invisible boundaries of the house – almost all of them imagined, and defined solely by the actors performance, never noticed or remarked upon until now – are ignored and trampled all over.

Those flashbacks in particular demand an incredibly strong presence on stage to pull off successfully. The lines between reality and the world inside Willy’s head grow increasingly blurry throughout the play, leading with a dread inevitability towards the titular conclusion, and it’s to Antony Sher’s immense credit that he pulls the whole thing off magnificently. It’s a towering performance that rules the stage, as he inhabits the tortured, exhausted, lost Willy. His accent initially grates, pushing us away from the character, but over time it serves as another aspect to Willy’s personality, combining his desperate need to be “well-liked” with his constant pushing away of those around him through his actions and failings.

There are moments in the play where the fine, fine line between feeling empathy with Willy, understanding his struggles, and just feeling sorry for him, and this production occasionally strays over that line, before immediately course-correcting. It’s an intense effort by the cast, who (without exception) put in excellent performances, not least Alex Hassell and Sam Marks as Biff and Happy, Willy’s sons. Asked to play grown men one minute, then teenage boys the next, they are given the greatest challenge after Sher, and both tackle it excellently. Hassell’s performance is heart-wrenching in the play’s closing moments, as he desperately attempts to break through Willy’s self-delusions and show him the truth.

"The struggle to maintain the tension that the play demands starts to become too much as the end approaches."

In fact, it’s the play’s closing moments where everything, across the board, comes together to deliver something truly great. This production is long, at two and a half hours (not including the interval) – not as long as The Crucible, which clocked in over three hours, but not as short as the one-act _A View from the Bridge _– and the struggle to maintain the tension, the intensity of emotion that the play demands starts to become too much as the end approaches.

But then, as Biff confronts his father one last time, everything abruptly falls into place. The use of a live band, which until this point feels significantly under-used, is fully justified by the trembling, painfully high note that lingers uncomfortably in the air as Willy makes his final decision. The lighting is perfect, the performances are perfect, everything just works. It’s a gut-wrenching moment – one telegraphed by the title, but one that still hits hard.

It takes a long time to reach that point, and while this production is never bad, or even adequate, it’s always good, it never quite hits greatness until the big finish. But when it gets there, it explodes, and hovers in the memory for hours, days afterwards. This is the play that mostly impresses, rather than awes, at first sight, but sticks with you long after the curtain falls. And that, more than anything else, deserves applause.

Death of a Salesman is on at the Noel Coward Theatre until 18th July. Tickets from £10, available online.