Joining Dennehy in this production, which started at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre, were Elizabeth Franz as Linda, Ted Koch as Happy and Ron Eldard as Biff. Eldard took over the role after Kevin Anderson finished his run in the play. Robert Falls directed the production.

Starting tonight, Playbill will stream the Showtime film of this production’s final performance. You can watch the play beginning at 6:00 PM EDT/3:00 PM PDT. It will remain available through October 25th. There is no charge to watch, but donations to The Actors Fund are encouraged. You can make donations here.

In Miller’s play, Willy Loman has just returned home from a business trip. He is tired of life on the road. Over the next 24 hours, through a series of memories and intense confrontations with his wife and two sons, Loman tries to reconcile the affair he had 15 years ago and his increasing inability to provide for his family. Not only does this pose complications with his wife, Linda, but he finds his vaulted position in the eyes of his sons, particularly Biff, has crumbled in front of his eyes.

Miller was taking a look at the American dream and whether or not it is attainable. If not, what are the costs. That eternal question makes the play ripe for re-examination as has been proven through its five Broadway productions and thousands of productions around the world.

For more about Death of a Salesman and its history, Showtime released this documentary around the same time they first aired this 1999 production. The audio goes in and out of synch, but it is an interesting look at the history of the play.

Death of a Salesman was nominated for six Tony Awards and won four including Best Revival of a Play, Best Actor for Dennehy, Best Featured Actress for Franz and Best Director for Falls.

This is a powerful production that I’ve seen both on stage and in this film. Fans of Death of a Salesman will love it. If you don’t know the play, this is as good a way to be introduced as you can get. After all, attention must be paid.

Note: Brian Dennehy passed away earlier this year.

Photo: Willy (Brian Dennehy) and Linda (Elizabeth Franz) Loman in the Goodman Theatre’s 1998 production of Death of A Salesman. (Photo by Eric Y. Exit/Courtesy the Goodman Theatre)

The post Death of a Salesman appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

Irons has only appeared on stage once before in Los Angeles. He played King Arthur in a one-night only production of the musical Camelot in 2005. He has done far more theatre in the United Kingdom.  Irons won the Tony Award for his performance in The Real Thing by Tom Stoppard. He’s known for countless film roles in such films as The French Lieutenant’s Woman, Dead Ringers, Reversal of Fortune (his Oscar-winning performance), and most recently for playing Alfred in Batman v. Superman and Justice League.

I recently spoke by phone with Irons while he was in New York with the play at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. We discussed the challenges this role presents, playing a role so many others have done before and why he finds this four-act play about a dysfunctional family so alluring.

When Brian Dennehy was interviewed by the New York Times in 2003 about the production of Long Day’s Journey in which he appeared, he said “There are truths told in this play, as in any great classic, that have to be heard over and over and over again.” What are the truths, from your point of view, that need to be heard?

There are so many, but, what you fear and what you learn when you are acting a role is often different than what the audience gets. There are great truths in this because he wrote it not to be performed. He wrote it as catharsis for himself. I think that’s why it’s so great and so flawed a play. He was dredging up the bottom of his soul and putting it on the page.

There are so many truths within it about how you affect your children, how you view life through the doors of your understanding. I think it is really a hell of a play. And it’s full of the love/hate that’s in most families. Like all great theatre it makes us realize we aren’t alone; that other people go through similar things that we do. When you see it with an audience, there’s something uplifting about it, even though it is a fairly grim subject.

In the play Mary has been pretty damaged by James. How do you tackle his demons within a character who doesn’t possess the self-awareness to realize what he’s actually done to her or the family?

I think on the last line it probably just sinks in when she says, “The in the spring something happened to me. Yes, I remember. I fell in love with James Tyrone and was so happy for a time.” I think O’Neill writes that he shifts in his chair and at that point he realizes that it’s the life he made her lead of the traveling player. Some women could have coped with that. This one couldn’t. She wasn’t strong enough to do what he asked. She should have stayed with her children when they were very young. But we all make mistakes in life. We are what we are and I think one of the great things about this play is O’Neill doesn’t seem to judge. He says this is humankind. This is my family. Everybody does the best they can in life, generally, all of us. The O’Neill’s or the Tyrone’s are no different.

Long Day’s Journey has been analyzed continuously since it was first performed. Does that analysis help you in building your character?

Basically I go from the text. That’s what makes people go back to see Shakespeare and O’Neill is no different. They want to see what particular actors can make of it. I bring different things than Brian Dennehy, Jack Lemmon, Laurence Olivier and all the people I’ve seen. The play can accommodate that. Some actors are able to play up certain aspects better than others. It’s always different and the play is always different and re-watchable as a result.

If you have a chance you want to see what other people’s choices were and compare them with yours. Allow them to be devil’s advocate and see what the options are. Finally it’s a question of looking over your shoulder and finally you go your own way and look inside yourself. I use what I can with my instrument. And it will be inevitably different and I hope it doesn’t suffer too much by comparison.

The pace of this production is considerably faster than most. Is there something new that you learned about the play by picking up the pace?

I think we play the first couple of scenes at a fair old lick. We’ve had to slow it down a little bit for New York because of the nature of the theatre, but I hope we can pick it up again in Los Angeles because we have a different shaped auditorium. I love what we do. The audience really has to work to listen and to watch. It gives us an arc because this play slows down and gets deeper and heavier as it goes on.  I was very pleased when Richard encouraged us to do that. It stops individual lines from becoming sacrosanct and having an importance they don’t deserve. And I don’t think you should make the audience sit still for longer than they deserve. Audiences have to work for a play to work. And in any conversation, if both sides aren’t interested there isn’t a conversation. I do think for some people when they are in the right place the production can be devastating.

In a 1922 interview, O’Neill said “The point is that life in itself is nothing. It is the dream that keeps us fighting, willing-living! Achievement, in the narrow sense of possession, is a stale finale.” Would you say that point of view applies to the Tyrone family and by extension the O’Neill family?

I think that’s at the core of Tyrone’s confession to his son that he has worked to have things, to have property, to have a summer home, to have security. I don’t know about all actors, but certainly I was always aware that the next job, you don’t know where it’s coming from and what it will have to pay. You know an actor’s career goes through ups and downs. So it’s very comfortable to have a financial cushion if you are raising a family. What we need is to be challenged. That’s why I did the play. I’m sort of comfortable. I’ve brought up a family and we have a cushion.

Doing a play like Long Day’s Journey, where you are putting yourself on the line, you are being compared to others who have done it, you are doing a long, difficult play to learn and difficult play to get right. Does one need to at the age of 69? I think you do. I’ve always felt that risk was extra life. It feeds you. Putting in front of you the possibility of failure and going ahead and seeing if you can get over it is very good. And for me it’s been tremendously energizing doing this play because it is real work. There’s no messing around with it. It’s so important to keep going back to theatre, to find these great parts, and give yourself the opportunity of falling flat on your face. That’s what keeps me going.

Go here to read part two of our interview with Jeremy Irons where he discusses his highly-acclaimed recordings of the poetry of TS Eliot, the meaning of awards and if Irons can ever fully know a character he plays.

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