Even With Race in the Mix, This ‘Salesman’ Delivers

New shades of friction and menace emerge between characters played by black and white actors. Yet far from overshadowing Arthur Miller’s larger message, of the elusiveness of the American dream, such twists reinforce it.

Joan Marcus
Blake DeLong and Wendell Pierce in ‘Death of a Salesman.’ Joan Marcus

In 1996, one of the greatest and most important playwrights of the 20th century delivered a speech in which he referenced the work of another. “To mount an all-black production of ‘Death of a Salesman,’” August Wilson said, “or any other play conceived for white actors as an investigation of the human condition through the specifics of white culture is to deny us our own humanity, our own history, and the need to make our own investigations from the cultural ground on which we stand as black Americans.”

It’s impossible to know if Wilson, who died of cancer in 2005, might have been swayed in any way by subsequent developments, particularly the emphasis on identity politics and social justice of recent years. I’d give anything, though, to be able to hear his take on the lovely and shattering new production of “Salesman” that just opened on Broadway, following a rapturous reception in London.

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