Nathan Lane, a three-time Tony Award winner, will tackle a towering dramatic role next spring, starring in a revival of Arthur Miller’s classic American play “Death of a Salesman.”
Lane, 69, will play Willy Loman, the despondent, and decompensating, traveling salesman of the show’s title. Laurie Metcalf, 70, a two-time Tony winner, will portray Loman’s long-suffering wife, Linda. And Christopher Abbott (“Girls”) and Ben Ahlers (“The Gilded Age”) have signed on to play the Lomans’ sons.
The revival is being produced by Scott Rudin and Barry Diller. Rudin, who has been easing his way back into producing this season after stepping back because of bullying allegations in 2021, also produced a Tony-winning 2012 “Salesman” revival that starred Philip Seymour Hoffman.
The production, which is planning to begin previews on March 6 and to open on April 9, will be directed by Joe Mantello, a two-time Tony winner who previously directed Lane and Metcalf in “November,” a 2008 Broadway comedy. Mantello has directed Metcalf on Broadway seven times, including in the current production of “Little Bear Ridge Road,” and also directed Lane in “Love! Valour! Compassion!” and “The Odd Couple.”
Lane said in an interview that Mantello had first floated the idea that they collaborate on a “Death of a Salesman” production 30 years ago, when they were working on “Love! Valour! Compassion!” “It’s been a long and arduous journey to this moment, and frankly I thought it was never going to happen,” said Lane, who won his Tonys for “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” “The Producers” and “Angels in America.”
“It’s just an incredibly complex and moving story,” he added, “and I felt it was time for me to take on another huge mountain like this. I’m happiest when I am attempting something like this — that’s what I was born to do.”
The Miller estate has given Mantello access to early “Salesman” drafts, and he has been scouring them for staging ideas. The revival team is envisioning a production that is more abstract and timeless than some productions. “There were really some pretty surprising theatrical ideas in those initial drafts,” Mantello said. “I don’t think he imagined a kind of heightened naturalism — it was much more abstract, and I’m interested in what he was thinking about.”
“Death of a Salesman” was first staged on Broadway in 1949, and that same year it won both the Pulitzer Prize and the best play Tony Award. Now considered one of the great American dramas, it has already been revived five times on Broadway, most recently in a 2022 production that starred Wendell Pierce.
The revival at the Winter Garden Theater is scheduled to last for 14 weeks. The theater, a onetime horse exchange with 1,500 seats, is larger than most Broadway play houses, but it has housed other dramas (most recently, this year’s “Good Night, and Good Luck,” starring George Clooney) and the “Salesman” production team is envisioning removing some rows of seats to bring the action closer to the audience. But they also plan to take advantage of the theater’s size, in part by using a real car (a motor vehicle is central to Loman’s life and the play’s plot).
Michael Paulson is the theater reporter for The Times.
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