The actors Nathan Lane and Laurie Metcalf and the director Joe Mantello were relaxing together the other night on a brown leather couch in Lane’s dressing room. The curtain had just come down on an evening performance of “Death of a Salesman,” and they looked like siblings killing time in the den as mom prepared to bring her meatloaf to the dinner table.
They are not actually family, yet they have created one — a messy, devoted and loving household — in the new Broadway revival of Arthur Miller’s piercing drama. (It’s at the Winter Garden Theater through Aug. 9.) Under Mantello’s direction, Lane stars as Willy Loman, the beset working man of the title, and Metcalf plays Linda, his determinedly protective wife, with Ben Ahlers and Christopher Abbott as their adrift adult sons, Biff and Happy.
Lane, Metcalf and Mantello have known one another and worked together on and off for decades. Mantello has directed Lane several times, as far back as the Off Broadway production of Terrence McNally’s gay buddies comedy “Love! Valor! Compassion!” in 1994. Mantello has directed Metcalf, too, on Broadway in Samuel D. Hunter’s “Little Bear Ridge Road,” a revival of Edward Albee’s “Three Tall Women” and numerous other works. And this is not Mantello’s first time directing both actors; in 2008, they came together on Broadway for David Mamet’s political satire “November.”
This Sunday, seeds of rapport planted long ago may yield a rich harvest: “Death of a Salesman” is up for nine Tony Awards, including for Lane, Metcalf and Mantello, and for best revival.
Collaboration — how it starts, thrives, surprises — was the topic these three friends were asked to consider as they sat close and reflected on Miller’s play. These are edited and condensed excerpts from the conversation.
How does collaboration begin building?
JOE MANTELLO We’ve all done this long enough to know that when you find like-minded artists that speak your language, you’re already ahead of the game. When I walk into the room with Nathan and Laurie, I understand there are certain things that we’re going to get for free. We’re going to get two people who are really prepared, who have a chemistry that has already been established, both on and off stage.
You build from there, piece by piece. I wish it was more complicated, but it’s not.
NATHAN LANE We collaborated, Laurie and I —
LAURIE METCALF It doesn’t count because I don’t remember it. [Laughs.]
LANE It meant something to me, but obviously, she had a lot on her mind. [Smiles.] We did “The School for Scandal” at the Williamstown Theater Festival in 1986. She played Lady Sneerwell, and I played Sir Benjamin Backbite. I saw her onstage in front of a vanity mirror, in a bustier and a rehearsal skirt. She was rehearsing the opening scene of the play and had a riding crop. The way she used this riding crop, you thought, well, she uses that for more than equestrian pursuits. I was like, who is this formidable woman? I fell in love with her.
How do you get a collaboration to click?
MANTELLO You ask the right questions. And when we ask those questions, something interesting is bound to happen. What’s the most provocative question that we can ask about this scene? How can we look at this play with fresh eyes and understand that we’re part of a longer conversation that’s been going on with this play, but this specific group of people is going to tell this story in this way?
METCALF With collaborating, you have to be careful. You have to read the room the right way because some people aren’t as open to it as others. We prefer it, the three of us. I think of it as throwing out a lot of ideas and seeing that the best one wins. You have to leave the ego outside.
In what kinds of directions did Miller’s script take you?
MANTELLO [Miller] leaves you a kind of brilliant trail of bread crumbs that you follow, like: This clue over here. What do we do? Let’s follow that way. What’s the one —
METCALF “She trembles with sorrow and joy.” That’s a stage direction that I find a little impossible to do.
LANE At one point next to Willy’s name in parentheses it says “lost.” There were so many of these scenes where Joe would say we’re trying to ignore all of that because we’re trying to look at it as if a young Arthur Miller handed us this play and said, what would you do with this? I was reverential about the play, and it was hard for me to let go of certain things.
Now, of course, I feel invigorated, exhilarated by what we’ve done. But it’s an easy play to lapse into self pity or just being lost. Or sad.
METCALF It’s absolutely true that something about the writing tries to lure you into sentimentality. Some of the writing is very poetic, and actors like to sniff that out and head that way. It’s hard to play against it. I can’t say that we knew what we had in the rehearsal room. It wasn’t until we added the audience and we heard how quiet it was out there that the storytelling came more forward.
Was there a scene you thought would go one way that went somewhere unexpected?
METCALF There are surprises that have happened within every scene of the play. [Turning to Lane.] Sometimes it’s the way that Chris interacts with you where you wouldn’t expect him to even be physical with you. He’ll drop his guard and reach out to Dad, you know? That was always completely unexpected to me. It still gets to me.
LANE When Ben and Chris started, they immediately started socializing together and going to Knicks games. They really formed a genuine bond. Very early on, I went out to dinner with Chris and Ben, and at the end of the night, Chris called me Papa. I was getting in the cab. He said, I love you, Papa.
MANTELLO I didn’t know that.
LANE He says, I love you, Papa. [Pauses.] Well, see, I’m an easy crier. Because I’m old. But the four of us have just become a genuine family. People see that onstage.
What do you think this revival says about the job of the salesman at a time when there aren’t really salesmen like Willy Loman, in real life or popular culture.
LANE You say there are no Willy Lomans anymore, but there are a lot of Willy Lomans out there. We’re selling right now, even though we may not have a valise with samples in it.
MANTELLO The play keeps talking about being well liked. That is such a contemporary idea, people chasing likes. When you curate a life as Willy does, and you present that to the world and say, ‘This is who I am, I’m really well liked. I’m big in Boston,’ that is the thing you start to chase because it feels good and it makes you feel whole. What Willy discovers at the end of the play, what was important, was: My son likes me.
You’ve all collaborated in many kinds of ensembles before. Laurie, you’ve been so rooted in ensemble work at the Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago.
METCALF That was the only way we knew how to work. It was, I’ll bring in a toaster and I’ll do my own costumes and I’m going to be at the thrift store if you need me to look for something for you. That basic work ethic has stayed with me, and is in the people I like to work with. We just desperately, for some reason, wanted to impress each other. We wanted to make each other either laugh or cry or have somebody come offstage at the end of a show and say, I didn’t expect you to do that out there.
Trying to impress each other ended up making us work harder. But we were also all sleeping together, so. [Laughs.]
Would you consider yourselves muses to one another?
MANTELLO It’s a weird word because there’s something condescending to one or the other party, like someone’s in service to the other person. But I would rather be in a room with these two people than almost anyone else.
LANE You want to be with smart people.
METCALF You want somebody to challenge you. Then you have to rise to the occasion.
MANTELLO Challenge, not compete.
METCALF That’s right.
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