His gravelly tone well suits Willy’s predicament, but the miking is disconcerting, especially since the other actors are not similarly amplified. Unfortunately, having suffered some vocal-cord damage, Klugman must now be miked onstage. In the flashback scenes, when Willy extols the virtues of hard work and positive thinking to his sons and wife, Klugman unbows his back and puts spring in his step, but underneath the bravado, the ultimately feeble attempts of a small man to pursue big dreams, lies an exhaustion, as if even discussing such matters requires an effort beyond Willy. There is no furtive entrance, no attempt to conceal the weariness. The play opens with Willy returning home early from a sales trip to New England, and from the first Klugman plays him as a man finally beaten down by life’s hard circumstances. Indeed, Robinson presides over a series of interesting choices that only heighten the play’s tragic qualities. Robinson does not integrate these two elements as smoothly as one would like - there is a fit-and-start quality to his transitions - but he conveys the pathos of Miller’s proto-dysfunctional family nonetheless.
It is at once a chronicle of a death foretold and a memory play.
Part of the genius in Miller’s play is that it not only recounts Willy’s crack-up in great detail, but also provides audiences with the deep background to understand it.
