Sitting shiva after the death of this salesman

In his memoir, Timebends, Arthur Miller writes of his first marriage, to Mary Slattery: "There was a deep shadow then over intermarriage between Jews and gentiles. . . . I was struggling to identify myself with mankind rather than one small tribal fraction of it." And so Willy Loman was Everyman, not EveryJew. Until now.

Under Lane Savadove's direction, EgoPo's passionate production of Miller's classic Death of a Salesman reimagines the Lomans as a Jewish family. The production starts with sitting shiva after Willy's suicide, making the entire play a backward look.

Savadove treats the play as autobiographical, assuming Biff (Sean Lally), Willy's oldest son, is Miller's avatar. The audience response on opening night bore this out: Suddenly, Death of a Salesman was a young man's play. The knowing laughter and tearful sniffling of the young men watching testified to a shift away from Willy (Ed Swidey) to Biff as the central character.

Biff's brother, Happy (Kevin Chick), is determined to carry on Willy's values, refusing to see them as dire moral errors. The casting of Biff and Happy is interesting; they look like boys, not men, certainly not "Adonises," and this nicely underscores both their arrested development and Willy's unrealistic view of them.

Linda (Mary Lee Bednarek), the long-suffering wife who stands by her overbearing, tormented man, is less a dishrag than Linda often is. That she and Willy love - and desire - each other is evident. But because this production is framed by Linda, first at the shiva, then at the end, the "Requiem" in the cemetery, she has more power here.

This is one of several troubling aspects of the director's concept: "The play is thus Linda's flashback as she struggles, along with us the audience, to understand the cause of Willy's death." But this means Linda knew about Willy's Boston dalliances and Charlie's cash donations to the household, as well as all the scenes with his brother Ben that take place in Willy's mind. It also reveals her memory to be guilt-free, even after her husband's suicide.

The rabbi is played by Russ Widdall, very impressive in his multiple roles as Willy's boss, Howard, the kind waiter Stanley, and Ben (but why does Ben speak with an accent, not really Yiddish, not quite Eastern European?).

Accents are a bit of a problem throughout; Willy's New Yorkese wanders into something vaguely Southern. Puzzling, too, is his beard - he looks more like a Talmudic scholar than a salesman who wants to be "well liked" in midcentury New England.

But Swidey's intense performance makes it clear the entire play is a record of Willy's disintegration, and his breakdown in the restaurant scene is very moving.

Another question is why African American actors play the Lomans' neighbors Charlie (Steven Wright) and his son Bernard (Derrick L. Millard II). Surely in 1948, this friendship would have been remarked upon.

And in 1948, Jews in America were haunted by the Holocaust and fearful about anti-Semitism; Miller's own ambivalence, even in overtly Jewish works - Focus, After the Fall, Broken Glass - is complex, so what is gained by this emphasis on the Lomans as Jews is unclear.

Death of a Salesman

Presented by EgoPo Classic Theater at the Latvian Society, Seventh and Spring Garden Streets, through Nov. 9.

Tickets: $25. Information: 267-273-1414 or egopo.org

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