Anthony LaPaglia Towers as ‘Death of a Salesman’ Opens to a Full House in Brisbane
Neil Armfield’s acclaimed production of the Arthur Miller classic has finally arrived at QPAC, with LaPaglia and Alison Whyte leading a formidable Australian cast.
Anthony LaPaglia has brought one of American theatre’s great tragic characters to Brisbane, with Neil Armfield’s acclaimed production of Death of a Salesman opening to a full house at QPAC’s Lyric Theatre.
Having previously played Melbourne, Sydney and Perth, the production is making its Brisbane debut for a limited season through Sept. 6, with LaPaglia reprising his role as Willy Loman opposite Alison Whyte as his wife, Linda.
And Brisbane audiences are getting the production at full strength.
At Sunday afternoon’s packed performance, LaPaglia was superb — a giant of an actor giving a commanding yet deeply vulnerable performance as Miller’s increasingly desperate travelling salesman. Whyte was equally impressive, bringing warmth, strength and considerable emotional weight to Linda, the woman attempting to hold both Willy and their fractured family together.
Written more than 75 years ago, Death of a Salesman won the 1949 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, but its examination of ambition, masculinity, family and the seductive promise of the American Dream has lost little of its power.
For LaPaglia, the connection with Miller runs particularly deep. The Australian actor met and worked with the playwright when he starred as Eddie Carbone in A View From the Bridge on Broadway in 1997, a performance that earned him the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play.
“Arthur Miller was the presiding genius of American theatre in the 20th Century and Death of a Salesman is arguably his finest achievement,” LaPaglia said.
“The story of Willy Loman is simply one of the greatest roles ever written and remains timeless in its creation of the tragic unravelling of a man’s identity after years of neglecting his relationships and true self-fulfilment. You see the effect this has on his devoted wife and the shattered relationships with his sons.”
LaPaglia believes Miller’s interrogation of the American Dream has acquired additional resonance in the decades since the play was written.
“It also speaks profoundly to the American Dream and, in many ways, foreshadows the dissolution of that dream in the 21st Century,” he said. “Even after 77 years, this play, like all great classics, is as powerful and relevant as ever.”
Armfield, one of Australia’s most celebrated theatre directors, first mounted the production with LaPaglia in 2023. Its subsequent seasons have attracted more than 90,000 theatregoers around Australia.
The director also sees contemporary political events in the United States as providing a changing backdrop to Miller’s story.
“When we developed this production of Arthur Miller’s great drama of the failure of the American Dream, Biden was in the White House,” Armfield said. “As the presidency changed, we were shocked at Miller’s prescience.”
For all its larger ideas, however, the enduring potency of Death of a Salesman comes from the intimacy of the Loman family tragedy. Willy’s dreams of success have collided with economic reality and his own failings, while Linda and their sons are left dealing with the consequences.
It is here that LaPaglia and Whyte make such an impact. Rather than allowing Willy to become simply a symbol of failed American ambition, LaPaglia finds the recognisable man underneath — proud, funny, difficult, frightened and gradually coming apart. Whyte’s Linda provides the emotional counterweight, her devotion to Willy accompanied by an increasingly painful awareness of what is happening to him.
Producers Torben Brookman and Andrew Henry said the response to the earlier seasons convinced them to bring the production to Queensland.
“This production of Death of a Salesman reaffirmed just how thrilling great theatre can be when it’s done at the highest level,” they said. “Under Neil Armfield’s direction and led by towering performances from Anthony LaPaglia and Alison Whyte, audiences didn’t just respond, they were deeply moved.”
On the evidence of a packed Lyric Theatre on Sunday afternoon, Brisbane appears ready to join them.
Death of a Salesman plays QPAC’s Lyric Theatre through Sept. 6.