Michele Placido and the ‘Death of a traveling salesman’ at the Quirino theater in Rome

The limited time available, due to the sudden replacement of Alessandro Haber for health reasons, did not prevent Michele Placido from giving the theatrical audience an interpretation of depth and substance, even emotional, of Willy Loman, the protagonist of ‘Death of a traveling salesman ‘, Arthur Miller’s drama for the translation by Masolino D’Amico, staged until March 6 at the Quirino theater in Rome, with Alvia Reale as the wife of a man who personifies the dream and at the same time the American nightmare par excellence, between the construction of one’s own fortunes and the ever-lurking failure, the attempt to socialize and the emotionless coldness of a calculating capitalism that both exalts and annihilates the individual. “The ‘Death of a traveling salesman’ is the story of a little man and his dream bigger than him – underlines Leo Muscato in his director’s notes – A mix of truth and hallucination, takes place simultaneously on the scene under the eyes of the public and in the head of the protagonist, in which we spectators unlike the other characters are called to enter. It is a modern tragedy that reveals the cruel side of the American dream. Willy Loman is one of the most tragic theatrical characters of the twentieth century, dreams of a future that he is unable to reach: his dreams are all wrong and his life slowly falls apart like the house he lives in. ” Masolino D’Amico recalls that “in drawing up balance sheets of the century that was ending, at the beginning of the 2000s ‘Time’ magazine listed the ten most significant theatrical works of the twentieth century: the absolute first place went to the ‘Six characters in search of an author’ by Luigi Pirandello, the second went to Arthur Miller’s ‘Death of a Salesman’. Without a doubt, it is the Great American Comedy, but at the same time so international that it is continuously filmed all over the world because – he explains – it is history of a dream, the story of a little man and his dream bigger than him “. (by Enzo Bonaiuto)