Sharon’s a pillar of strength in the new ‘Salesman’
AWARD-WINNING actress sharon D. Clarke said she refused to play Willy Loman’s wife in Death of a salesman as a weak woman.
Clarke stars as Linda Loman alongside american actor Wendell Pierce as arthur Miller’s downtrodden everyman, in a historic London production of the seminal play, directed by Marianne elliott and Miranda Cromwell at the young Vic, in which the principal characters are black.
With the change in pigmentation, and the postwar period setting, there was concern that Linda might be more subservient. ‘When i’ve seen Lindas before, on telly and stuff, she’s always been submissive,’ Ms Clarke told me. she laughed then added: ‘and i’m not good at playing submissive.
‘if people are going to watch, particularly young people, i don’t want them to see a submissive woman. i think she can be a woman of her time, but she can still have a strength.
‘For me, Linda’s weakness is her family. she’s doing everything she can, particularly for her man.’
During the play, Linda tells her sons, played by arinze Kene and Martins imhangbe, that their father is ‘the dearest man in the world . . . and i won’t have anyone making him feel unwanted, low or blue’.
When i saw the show (a co-production between the young Vic and elliott-Harper Productions), i thought the directors must have found a trove of additional dialogue. Clarke said one of the play’s u.s. producers thought the same. ‘We changed two words. otherwise, everything is as Miller wrote,’ she said.
the powerful drama about a 63year-old salesman who has spent decades travelling, sometimes 700 miles at a stretch, resonates (certainly to me) in a completely different way because he is now played by an african-american.
‘He’s taking his life in his hands,’ Clarke said. ‘He’s driving through territories where he could be lynched. He might not come home one night. i mean, what’s a black man doing with a car?’
she added that you can understand now why Willy’s not always done as well at selling.
also, his breakdown comes across in a way i have not witnessed before. ‘Linda doesn’t know how to help him,’ Clarke told me.
Composer Femi temowo has written a spiritual called When the trumpet sounds.
‘i said to him: “My mum would swear blind that she was singing that in church,” ’ said Clarke. ‘it’s an original song that Femi’s written. But it feels so familiar, which i think is a stroke of genius.’
Just like the entire production, which richly deserves a West end transfer.