As traveling salesman Willy Loman's fears of failure envelope him, his wife Linda's unwavering love and support never falter, even as the disillusionment of their sons Happy and Biff send the family into an emotional tailspin. As Willy sinks deeper into schizophrenia, his ongoing delusions and hallucinations about the past make it increasing difficult for him to function in his stressful reality. Taking what he thinks is the easy way out since he believes he is worth more dead than alive, Willy falls deeper into overwhelming depression from which there is no escape.
Scroll down for a sampling of photos from John Chatterton's Fifth Annual Midwinter Madness Play Festival!
Mad Cow Theatre presents The Explorers Club, by Nell Benjamin, set to open January 23, 2015 in The Harriett as part of Season 18. BroadwayWorld has a first look at the cast in action below!
Continuing Arizona Theatre Company's 2014/2015 season is a 1966 Broadway hit thriller and a 1967 Oscar-nominated movie classic starring Audrey Hepburn and Alan Arkin: Wait Until Dark, by playwright Frederick Knott and adapted by Jeffrey Hatcher in 2013.
Arthur Miller's intense drama, raising questions of morality and the limits of family ties, promises to be a special opening production for Raven's 2014-2015 season. Headlining the cast will be Chuck Spencer and JoAnn Montemurro as Joe and Kate Keller. These two Raven ensemble members, who earned accolades for their work as Willy and Linda Loman in Miller's Death of a Salesman and as Victor and Esther Franz in his The Price, will play Joe and Kate Keller. Raven first produced All My Sons in 1990 and they appeared in that production as well, playing George Deever and Ann Deever.
Portland Stage opened its 2014-2015 season with a probing and poignant production of Neil Simon's Brighton Beach Memoirs, the first of Simon's so-called 'Eugene Trilogy.' The 1983 autobiographical reminiscence tells the story of a Jewish boy growing up in a colorful, often dysfunctional extended family in Brooklyn during the Depression. That Simon's play retains so much of its original impact is a tribute to his gifts as a playwright, especially his ability to mingle humor and pain in the crucible of memory.
Portland Stage has mounted an attractive, atmospheric production which owes no small measure of its appeal to Brittany Vasta's sprawling, multi-tiered set, comprised of small eclectically cluttered cubbies evoking the straitened family circumstances. Director Samuel Buggeln makes imaginative use of the space as he draws taut, expressive performances from each of the seven actors, who are all virtually note perfect in capturing the Brooklyn accents.
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