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Hoo-rah!

  • You saw it here folks. My first true NYC Catharsis. Lucky me. Copious weeping on all fronts.
  • It is truly one of the great American plays, and they did it absolute justice. The text was brought to life in ways I never imagined.
  • Possibly the most powerful moments for me were watching Willy Loman’s delusions blend with real life– I have to give due credit to the lighting and the blocking for making these moments feel lonely and truly unsettling.
  • I enjoyed the contrast between the father/son relationship of Willy/Biff and Charley/Bernard. Willy pumps Biff so full of hot air and is incredibly involved in Biff’s life and he ends up a failure. Charley, on the other hand, had what seemed to be a laissez-faire approach to fathering. He was kind and genial to Bernard, but was never a super active part of his life, and look at how Bernard turned out– presenting cases to the Supreme Court!
  • How do Andrew Garfield and Philip Seymour Hoffman maintain their throats, performing this once, sometimes twice a day? The level of visceral anger and yelling and sobbing they produce (never unjustified in my opinion) would undoubtedly destroy the voice of mere mortals.
  • Again, Biff and Willy– just… oh god. Their rapport is so genuine and heartbreaking: such wonderful intentions turn so very sour. Their refusal to level with each other is infuriating and a fundamentally timeless element of families. Andrew Garfield and Philip Seymour Hoffman invest everything they have into these roles; I’ve never seen such raw, unabashed emotion on stage before.

Blech…

  • Not a critique of the show, but rather the audience: am I the only person who hates the tradition of raucous clapping when a famous actor enters a scene for the first time? Ughh… completely kills the moment.
  • I appreciate the intention of using the music from the original production, but I felt the play would have been better served with a different soundtrack. Sorry, the flute is just a hokey instrument to me.
  • while undoubtedly a masterful performance well-deserving of its Tony nomination, Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Willy Loman seemed one too many times exactly like the performance Dustin Hoffman gave in the 1985 film. Particularly his laugh.
  • I did not enjoy the performance of the actor playing Howard. At all. Way too over the top and farcical.