Wendell Pierce is having a very good year.
He is in two festival-prize-winning movies (“Clemency” and “Burning Cane”) and an Amazon television series (“Jack Ryan”). He helped save a radio station, WBOK-AM, in his hometown New Orleans.
And now he is starring as Willy Loman in a production of Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” in London’s West End, where the play begins previews Oct. 24 following a well-received run at the Young Vic.
“This is one of the most memorable years of my career,” said the actor, best known as Bunk in HBO’s “The Wire.” “What I try to do is the trifecta — television, film and theater every year — and this is just the epitome.”
This “Salesman” is noteworthy because the four members of the Loman family are all played by black actors, while the other key roles are played by white performers. The casting gives a new edge to the 1949 play, making the slights and suspicions freshly fraught.
“The thing about Wendell is you can’t help but love him,” said Marianne Elliott, who is directing the production with Miranda Cromwell. “He brings to the part a vulnerability and a massive heart, so even though that character has flaws and makes tremendous mistakes, you feel his pain, and you’re hoping for him all the time.”
These are edited excerpts from an interview with Pierce.
How would you describe Willy Loman?
Willy Loman is a man who believes in meritocracy. He believes if you do the things that are necessary, you should achieve certain things in life. And he’s a man who is lost in the denial of what’s really happening in his life, which is that he’s not doing that well.
Tell me about your previous encounters with the character.
I read it in high school. I saw it on television with Dustin Hoffman. And I have since gone back to see the Lee J. Cobb. I saw Brian Dennehy and Philip Seymour Hoffman — archive footage. And I’ve seen the movie with Fred March.
Did you ever think you might play the role?
No. I was terrified, and had a sense of unworthiness. And still in the midst of it every night I feel like I’m at base camp at Mount Everest looking up, knowing that I have to summit by the end of the evening.
Why did you want to take this on?
I knew that it would challenge me like no other role. It is the American Hamlet. And now that I’ve done it, I’m going down the list of all the roles that I want to do: Richard III and Walter Lee (“A Raisin in the Sun”). I want to do Astrov (“Uncle Vanya”) again. I’m ready to do my Othello, and look forward in the years to come to do a Lear. I’d love to do “Invisible Man” if there was an interpretation of that. I still have fear, but now I have courage.
What was your thinking about having black actors play the Lomans?
Arthur Miller never mentions race in the play. It’s really an examination of the human psyche, which is universal.
Some scenes read so differently now.
When I’m caught in the hotel, I tell the woman, “Go into the bathroom — there may be a law about this in Massachusetts,” and that line rings out because now you see this black man with a white woman in 1949, knowing that black men have been lynched and killed for less. And in the restaurant, it’s like, ”Let me put you in the back, let me put you out of sight — we can’t have Negro patrons in here.” The interpretation is not in competition with the play. It illuminates it even more.
Are there any changes to the script?
The only thing is a school — it’s U.C.L.A. instead of Virginia, because a black man couldn’t get into Virginia in 1949. And then there is an insult from another salesman when he goes to a store. When Dustin Hoffman did it the word was “shrimp.” When Lee J. Cobb was doing it they made it “walrus.” So I was thinking, as an African-American man, what would be the greatest insult? So we say nothing, and you hear the racial epithet. I just dropped a word, and it rang out, because everyone knows what the word is.
What have you learned about yourself from the part?
I discovered a great fear: Are my best days behind me?
That’s very Willy.
Yes. The lesson you have to learn is redemption. Ultimately in a very awful way, Willy makes a choice that I would not make, and I have to tell myself constantly, “Dude, you cannot accept this choice." But I can have an understanding of why he did it.
Is there any thought of bringing this production to the United States?
Ideally I would love to do it on Broadway. But it’s such an American play, I would love to do it at the Kennedy Center, at the Orpheum Theater in San Francisco or the Fox in Detroit. To do it in different American cities — this interpretation which I think is historic — it would be a great honor. There are nibbles and, if there aren’t, there’s the chum that I’m throwing out.
The role must be exhausting.
People always, at the end of the evening, say, “Wow, you seem so up.” I’m like, “Yeah man, I just climbed Mount Everest.”
Michael Paulson is the theater reporter. He previously covered religion, and was part of the Boston Globe team whose coverage of clergy sexual abuse in the Catholic Church won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. @MichaelPaulson
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