For two weeks every summer, Salzburg, Austria, hosts the Salzburg Festival, which began with the first performance of Hugo Von Hofmannsthal’s morality masterpiece, Jedermann, (based on a play written in the late 1400’s by an unknown author) or as we have come to call it, Everyman. In the intervening 102 years, Everyman has been performed every summer outdoors in front of the Salzburg Cathedral, featuring famous and not-so-famous actors, directors and designers. The story: a rich man unexpectedly is called to his death in the middle of a lavish party. Told that he may bring someone with him on the journey, his friends, family, even his gold, all desert him. He is left alone, both God and Satan struggling for his soul.
This coming weekend, The Toledo Rep presents another iconic character out of theatre history, this time a little closer to home. In Arthur Miller’s Pulitzer Prize winning classic Death Of A Salesman, Willy Loman is a more recent version of “everyman”, for a different, American, generation. Opening in 1949, Salesman fell in between World War II and the Baby Boom; television was only 10 years old while radio was our lifeline; Frank Sinatra was huge, Elvis was about to be; and Willy Loman, a salesman, was stuck between a career with great promise and obsolescence.
Loman and every man
For all their differences, there are also similarities between Willy Loman and everyman that make both universal and multi-generational. An “everyman” is described as a normal person, and “average Joe” who represents us as we are; warts and al. In American theater, there is no man more every than Willy Loman.
Death of a Salesman has been described as a scathing review of the American dream. Willy Loman lives that dream and maintains the belief that as long as you are liked, you will be admired and good things will come. He views his life as a disappointment that it could be otherwise, that being liked is not enough. Everyman can be seen as an indictment of those who are living the dream and have everything they could possibly want and how quickly that dream turns against them. Everyman realizes that having it all is not enough at the day of reckoning.
Willy’s past is a constant reminder of choices he made that set him on the road to the death of the American dream; the choices everyman made in his past lead him to his sorrows as well.
Everyman depends on his perceived qualities (good deeds, money, confession, etc) to lift him in the final hour to redemption. Willy has depended on other people (his wife, boss, his neighbor, and a mistress) to lift him up and allow him to be a hero to all. But everyman and Willy Loman, experience disappointment when trusting others.
Where it ends for both men is the biggest difference: everyman is redeemed by faith and hope. We are left with the belief that our struggles are worth it and we will see a brighter day. For Willy Loman, the American dream dies, as it does for countless other “everyman” in our society even today. Making Death Of A Salesman, as relevant as it was in 1949; and as relevant as Everyman has been since the fifteenth century.
$20 adults, $18 seniors, $10 students, $5 children. The show will run Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm, Sunday matinees at 2:30pm,until Sunday April 28. Toledo Repertoire Theatre. 16 10th St. 419-243-9277. www.toledorep.org