Roxbury Latin Welcomes Christopher Lloyd as Miller's 'Salesman'

There's no getting around it: Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman" is a colossal bummer.

That said, the revered 1949 portrait of a failed American dream continues to resonate for audiences with each revival – and there have been quite a few. Last night Vermont's Weston Playhouse brought a new production of the play starring Christopher Lloyd to a well-packed Smith Arts Theater at Roxbury Latin in West Roxbury.

Miller's bitter pill makes a particularly bold statement at this time in our culture; educated middle-class Americans are expected to have big dreams. And yet, our economy has taken a huge hit in recent years and sheer determination ensures much less than it used to. Parents often say to their healthy children, "You can do anything you want if you put your mind to it." But that's simply no longer the case; having big dreams was never so tragic… except maybe in Miller's play, which was written at a time when independent salesmen were in fierce competition.

The central character in 'Salesman,' Willy Loman, seems to have based his sense of self-worth on social prestige and material wealth, things that he sees as forever intertwined; both are also areas in which he's come up short. As his mind begins to deteriorate under the stress, these perceived insufficiencies weigh heavy. This is all aggravated by the realization that his son Biff is content in his mid-30's to work on a Texas farm rather than becoming a businessman. But Loman is clearly a victim of his own expectations and lack of humility, which we watch play out in an ongoing series of flashback memories.

As act one lumbers on (it's an anvil-heavy 90 minutes no matter who the players are) it becomes clear that his jealousies and resentments have backed him into a very tight corner. All of his worst fears are coming true. And yet Loman continues clinging to the idea that, "The man who creates personal interest is the man who gets ahead," and that being well-liked (as opposed to just 'liked') is of prime importance for doing business. His steadfast belief in such a delusional formula for greatness proves to be his undoing. In reality, Loman is not well-liked by his business associates and this is profoundly disturbing to him. The realization speeds his downward spiral which eventually results in his unnecessary death.

Christopher Lloyd is perhaps best known as the forever brain-damaged Reverend Jim in the sitcom Taxi and as Doc Brown in the Back to the Future trilogy. Both of those characters are lovably lethargic, but what makes Lloyd's Loman a success is, in part, that he's more difficult to love. And yet he passes the train wreck test – you can't look away. The aloof nature of his most well-known roles is replaced here with an unexpected intensity that reveals Lloyd as having more dramatic prowess than he's been credited for in the past. His support cast is equally effective, particularly Amy Van Nostrand as Loman's wife Linda who manages to bring a few moments of amusing relief to an otherwise laugh-parched three hours.

Whether its morbid curiosity or an interest in classic American theater (or both) that brings audiences out again and again for this story, it's the level of identification with a tragic character that sticks with you well after the curtain drops. Especially in the wake of a debilitating recession, it's hard not to see some aspect of ourselves in Willy Loman. His desperate need to be liked and his unfortunate correlation between likability and success should speak loud and clear to a generation raised with social media tools like Facebook and Twitter wherein popularity and authority are quantified in hard numbers.