Philip Seymour Hoffman earned a Tony nomination for playing Broadway’s most recent Willy Loman. (Bruce Glikas/FilmMagic)
Just how universal is Willy Loman, the doomed soul of “Death of a Salesman”?
We’re about to find out, with “This Great Country,” a new theatrical reimagining of Arthur Miller’s 1949 classic.
And while we’ve seen many shapes and sizes of different Lomans through the years — Lee J. Cobb, George C. Scott, Dustin Hoffman and Philip Seymour Hoffman among them — this new version has six actors sharing the role, including Korean, Indian and African-American men and two women.
Heavily trimmed, rewritten and set in the present — with a cast of 17, ages roughly 7 to 17 — the free production kicks off Wednesday as part of the River to River festival. The play falls in line with the very untraditional take by the Brooklyn-based 600 Highwaymen, run by the husband-and-wife team of Abigail Browde and Michael Silverstone.
Browde says their version of Miller’s famous play was inspired by a road trip through Texas, where they were struck by the desolation of the small towns they passed through.
“They were all depressed and boarded up, with a lot of people just hanging out, looking for work,” she says. “There was a sense that capitalism had just busted.”
She says they decided to use nontraditional casting, including having a young child play the role of Willy’s boss, Howard.
“We had a feeling of, why not?” she says. “We think the story is relevant to a 30-year-old woman of color . . . or a 70-year-old woman . . . or a 50-year-old man. It actually feels more realistic than having a cast that looks like a representation of this story as we usually imagine it.”
The 4-year-old troupe favors nontraditional spaces: One of its productions was done in a church basement. “This Great Country,” which premiered last spring at an arts festival in Austin, Texas, will be presented in what used to be an Express clothing store in the Pier 17 shopping mall at the South Street Seaport.
“The audience will literally walk through a functioning shopping mall into this empty space,” Browde says. “It felt perfectly resonant for this story about the effects of capitalism on the American family. This temple of consumption really lends itself well as a backdrop to the story as we want to tell it.”
That story can be a little convoluted, even for the cast. Lana Dieterich, 68, not only plays Willy’s sympathetic wife, Linda, but Willy himself.
“At one point in the show, I turn on a dime,” the Austin-based actress says. “I say one line as Willy and the next as Linda.”
She says she also found it difficult to deliver the production’s deliberate deadpan style.
“They stripped a lot of what an actor normally brings to a part away . . . it’s as bare-bones as possible,” she says. “I was worried about how audiences were going to receive it, because they took an American classic and messed with it. But the response [in Texas] was great.”
“This Great Country” plays Wednesday through Saturday nights at 8 at Pier 17, South Street Seaport. To reserve a free ticket, visit rivertorivernyc.com.