DEATH OF A SALESMAN Starring Nathan Lane and Laurie Metcalf

Critics have stopped by the Broadway revival of Death of a Salesman, and the reviews are in! The new production is directed by Joe Mantello and led by Nathan Lane as Willy Loman and Laurie Metcalf as Linda Loman. Read the reviews in our roundup below!

They are joined by Christopher Abbott, Ben Ahlers, Jonathan Cake, K. Todd Freeman, John Drea, Tasha Lawrence, Jake Silbermann, Michael Benjamin Washington, Joaquin Consuelos, Jake Termine, Karl Green, and Jack Falahee.

Additional casting includes Katherine Romans as Miss Forsythe, Mary Neely as Letta, and ensemble members Aidan Cazeau, Charlie Niccolini, Alexis Bronkovic, Erik Kilpatrick, and Brendan Donaldson.

The limited engagement has been extended by eight weeks and will now run through August 9.

Helen Shaw, The New York Times: *CRITIC’S PICK* Now at the Winter Garden Theater, “Death of a Salesman” has returned to Broadway, yet again in triumph. We haven’t exactly had a chance to miss it; four years ago, Wendell Pierce and Sharon D Clarke were playing Willy and Linda Loman only a few blocks away. Still, we don’t begrudge a few Hamlets every season. You’re telling me Nathan Lane and Laurie Metcalf were available? And the director Joe Mantello? To quote Willy’s older brother, Ben, played here by a sharklike Jonathan Cake: “One must go in to fetch a diamond out.”

Charles Isherwood, The Wall Street Journal: It’s an arresting image that signals the production’s bold, stylized approach to this canonical text, often treated as an antique that requires only a feather duster to be brought back to life. More than any staging I’ve seen, this version, directed by Joe Mantello and starring Nathan Lane and Laurie Metcalf as Willy and Linda Loman, casts the play in an existential light. We witness not just a critique of the fallacies inherent in the so-called American Dream (or Willy’s meretricious understanding of it), but also a more resonant examination of the isolation and loneliness of life, the fear that comes with the waning of hope, the tenuousness of human connection, and the desperation that follows.

Matthew Wexler, One-Minute Critic: In contrast, Metcalf’s Linda stretches beyond the role of capable homemaker. Her devout commitment to her unraveling husband, and to keeping the peace between Willy and their sons, Biff (Christopher Abbott) and Happy (Ben Ahlers), nearly reaches a tipping point. Mantello further amplifies the play’s flashback scenes by double-casting the boys as younger versions of themselves (Joaquin Consuelos and Jake Termine), warmly illuminated by Jack Knowles’ otherwise stark lighting design.

David Finkle, New York Stage Review: What can also be said of this production is that director Joe Mantello—when he directed Lane 30 years back in Love! Valour! Compassion!, they first talked about this venture—has approached the enterprise not as his need to impose radical directorial changes so’s to differentiate this Death of a Salesman from that of predecessors. Instead, he’s approached the task by doing something more impressively radical. He researched Miller’s initial manuscripts, discovering that the playwright had early on intended to have two actors playing Biff, Happy and less athletic friend, more intelligently accomplishing Bernard so that they can be seen as the boys when younger.

Frank Scheck, New York Stage Review: Mantello’s staging is largely traditional and respectful, but it gives the play a more dreamlike, cinematic feel than usual. More than any previous Salesman I’ve seen, this rendition truly seems to be taking place in Willy’s fragmented mind, with Chloe Lamford’s set design suggesting a massive, dilapidated garage (the numerous pillars, though, seem unnecessary). Besides a few pieces of furniture here and there, the main scenic element is the full-size car that Willy drives on in the opening scene and drives off for his final fateful excursion.

Ron Fassler, Theater Pizzazz: Where the production is at its best with the four actors who make up the Loman family. When they’re onstage, remarkable is the word for this Death of a Salesman.

Austin Fimmano, New York Theatre Guide: When a classic play like Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman returns to Broadway for yet another revival, it’s bound to attract attention. Doubly so when the cast includes Broadway powerhouses like Nathan Lane and Laurie Metcalf. But whether it’s a fondness for great American classics, a bias for the actors, or familiarity from your high school English curriculum that piques your interest, this revival is one to see. Nearly 80 years after Salesman was first performed, Joe Mantello directs a production that proves the play’s sharp thorns have not dulled over time.

Greg Evans, Deadline: But first and last, Salesman is Willy’s story, and generation after Broadway generation has thrown its best into the role, from Lee J. Cobb, Fredric March (in the 1951 film), George C. Scott, Brian Dennehy and Dustin Hoffman to Philip Seymour Hoffman and Wendell Pierce. Lane takes his place among the best, his Willy Loman a powder keg of frustration and disappointment and deep, deep sadness. Lane uses his loud, outside voice to excellent effect, his shouts of exasperation and anger giving way to instant regret and recrimination. Watch, future Willys, and pay attention.

Naveen Kumar, Variety: Miller’s traveling salesman is here something of a sad clown running out of gas. But like the handsome, burgundy Chevy that actually pulls up onstage (one curious anachronism among several), Lane doesn’t have the air of a beat-up workhorse. He is undoubtedly gifted and capable in the part: tender, forceful, and connected to the text. But his natural gentility is tough to dress down. It worked in his favor for his Tony-winning turn as the monstrous Roy Cohn in “Angels in America,” but buying him as an end-of-his-rope everyman taxes the imagination.

Thom Geier, Culture Sauce: No matter. This is a solid production of a play that continues to reflect aspects of American life and works its way into our heart and consciousness with an almost gravitational pull. While Linda gets some of the showiest speeches — which Metcalf delivers with attention-demanding skill — Willy remains its absolute center. His plight could be that of any white-collar worker on the verge of obsolescence due to a cheaper Gen Z workforce or, more likely, the advent of AI. And in a career-best performance, Lane shuffle-steps across the stage while his eyes dart around in a state of addled bewilderment. Though he’s unmoored from reality as well as his own life, he manages to close one final deal. And we’ve all willingly signed on the dotted line.

David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter: Down to the smallest roles, this production is astutely cast, and its arresting design elements add a suitably shabby grandeur to the play’s unsparing view of America’s broken promises. Mantello does some of his finest work in a heartfelt revival that will be remembered for the estimable Lane’s career-crowning performance. It’s magnificent theater.

Johnny Oleksinki, The New York Post: Yet director Joe Mantello’s pummeling revival, which opened Thursday night, accomplishes what this play at its most potent should. Yes, you leave raving about the sterling performances of Nathan Lane and Laurie Metcalf and the striking stagecraft. But, for more than a few people I overheard on the way out, it also powerfully summoned a tougher topic: their own lives.

Robert Hofler, The Wrap: The reference to that famous 1950s family sitcom applies here because, boy, are the performances big, broad and occasionally very funny. Led by Nathan Lane and Laurie Metcalf, the ensemble in this Joe Mantello-directed production acts up a storm of category 6 proportions. There’s more acting going on at the Winter Garden than the rest of Broadway combined, and that includes “Oh, Mary!”

Adrian Horton, The Guardian: That it works – that this show teases out disdain and sympathy for its family in equal measure – is a testament to Lane, for whom Willy Loman has been a career-long aspiration. (A production with Mantello has been in the works for over three decades; this show’s protracted path owes in part to its producer Scott Rudin, now in the midst of a comeback several years after allegations of bullying.) Lane’s trademark brassiness lends the character’s long-winded rants an improbably winsome sheen, his embarrassments a piercing ache. There’s a hypnotic rhythm to the madness of his Willy; when it’s time to go, he nearly takes the show with him. It’s a bravura turn, but the show’s heart remains Linda, whom Metcalf imbues with crisp practicality. Dutiful, entirely un-naive and blisteringly angry, she is devastatingly economical even in her most withering and emotionally prostrate moments, Metcalf conveying the exhaustion of a woman used to holding everything together.

Dalton Ross, Entertainment Weekly: In between Miller’s prescient original text and the stellar performances on the stage, there is certainly a lot here for audiences to chew on… long after they have filed out of the theater. Grade: A

David Cote, Cote Notices: Watching director Joe Mantello’s monumental yet intimate revival of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, it’s also hard to suppress thoughts of the not-yet-dead huckster running our country. In 1949, Miller could not have predicted an American economy perched so precariously on fraud, speculation, and antihuman tech. At least, not quite. There are signs of technology’s power to capture reality in a wire recorder that the young supervisor Howard (John Drea) demonstrates for a befuddled Willy Loman (Nathan Lane). In another scene, careworn spouse Linda (Laurie Metcalf), tells Willy the refrigerator needs a new belt. His bilious reply:

Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune: And as played by Nathan Lane and John Drea in Joe Mantello’s exquisitely directed Broadway revival, which has several Steppenwolf Theatre influences, it will sock you in the gut. Sure did me. And I’ve seen this play countless times. Then again, when you get close to Willy’s age, you also start to see this play differently. Very, very differently.