Playing the Salesman

Playing The Salesman

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Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

11/02/2006

BBC Radio 4 Extra - Playing the Salesman

Christopher Bigsby talks to actors and directors on portraying Willy Loman.  From 2006.

Christopher Bigsby hears from actors and directors on tackling the character of Willy Loman in Arthur Miller’s play.  From 2006.

Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman is a great tragedy of an ordinary man, and all over the world people identify with Willy Loman. 

The play was first performed 75 years ago, on 10th February, 1949. Arthur Miller also died on 10th February, in 2005. To mark this BBC Radio 4 is repeating Playing the Salesman, presented by Christopher Bigsby, Miller's biographer. It was first broadcast in 2006. 

Christopher Bigsby hears from great actors - Dustin Hoffman, Warren Mitchell, Brian Dennehy, Alun Armstrong and Ying Ruocheng - about playing the role. Ying, who played Willy in Miller's production on Beijing, speaks about how this play, set in capitalist America, nonetheless spoke to Chinese people in 1983.    

John Malkovich and Marjorie Yates, who played Biff and Linda, and the directors Michael Rudman, David Thacker and Bob Falls, recall working with the author, and in recordings made in the year before he died, Arthur Miller reflects on the Everyman he created.

Producer: Julian May.

First broadcast on Radio 4 in February 2006.

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