Off-B'way Review: Mrs. Loman

Monique Vukovic in Mrs. Loman.
Credit: Mari Eimas-Dietrich

Sequels of classic plays have a mixed history. Some are total bombs such as the famous flop musical A Doll’s Life which follows Ibsen’s Nora after she slams the door on her husband’s stifling household. While others, such as Lucas Hnath’s A Doll’s House Part 2, based on the same work, offer intriguing insights on the original and modern times. Barbara Cassidy’s Mrs. Loman at Theater Row starts with an intriguing idea: what happens to the widow of Arthur Miller’s tragic everyman Willy Loman after he expires in Death of a Salesman? Unfortunately, Cassidy has plenty of ideas, but fails to develop any of them fully, leaving us with a pale imitation of Miller’s classic.

In press materials, Cassidy states “While having great admiration for [Salesman], I have always had immense trouble with the female characters and the misogyny. I decided I wanted to make a play about a Linda Loman who becomes a very different person after Willy’s death.” In Cassidy’s aftermath of Willy’s demise, Linda (a valiantly vibrant Monique Vukovic) becomes a “different person” in such surface ways as taking a philosophy course at Brooklyn College, flirting with lesbianism (with Willy’s mistress from Boston who has somehow wound up as Linda’s neighbor), smoking pot, listening to jazz, and briefly discussing the Atomic Bomb and America’s rejection of Jewish refugees during WWII. As if we didn’t get the point, the playwright has an unnecessary character called Contemporary Woman (Patricia Marjorie in a mannered performance playing a symbol) emerge from the audience to explain Linda’s metamorphosis.

Linda Jones and Monique Vukovic in
Mrs. Loman.
Credit: Mari Eimas-Dietrich

In addition, Cassidy addresses a plethora of social issues as if checking off boxes on a list of “important topics.” She has Loman eldest son Biff (conflicted Matt “Ugly” McGlade) embark on an affair with an African-American waitress with intellectual ambitions (Ara Celia Butler displaying intelligence and grit). Younger son Happy (an appropriately slimy Hartley Parker) becomes a brutal sexual predator and expresses bigoted sentiments as do neighbors Charley and Bernard (Jerry Ferris and Joe Gregori, believable). It’s a perfectly valid point to incorporate the prevailing sexist and racist attitudes of Salesman’s era (the late 1940s), but it feels as if these attitudes have been plastered on the characters rather than emerging naturally. Linda, her friends and family speak like textbooks rather than real people. 

This strange play wraps up with an unearned, bizarre conclusion echoing Miller’s original. The sons confront Linda who has all of a sudden become deranged and dangerous, leading to a ridiculously unbelievable act of violence. Then all the actors assemble on stage and utter absurd lines such as “What does it all mean?” and “This is America.”

Matt "Ugly" McGlade, Monique Vukovic and
Hartley Parker in Mrs. Loman.
Credit: Mari Eimas-Dietrich

Megan Finn’s direction is serviceable but uneven in pacing. The cast does its level best to bring honest life to the derivative, clunky play but are ultimately defeated by its poor construction. In one scene, we are supposed to believe Happy is manhandling Lena, Biff’s girlfriend, while Linda, Biff and Esther, the neighbor (a fine Linda Jones), are all sleeping off the aftereffects of a party in the next room. This is too bad because Monique Vukovic displays earnest emotions as Linda and vivifies the one honest speech in the whole endeavor. In a direct address to the audience, Linda recalls witnessing an African-American little girl falling from a subway train onto the tracks and then Linda quickly fled the scene at the next stop. But she doesn’t know if it was a dream or if it really happened. Linda can’t figure out if she was harboring anti-black thoughts or just trying to escape tragedy. In this one moving sequence, the author is not baldly stating her intentions but offering ambiguity and the actress is delivering that confusion. If Mrs. Loman had more of this subtlety and less on-the-nose sermonizing, it might have been an interesting critique of Miller’s work instead of a confusing and obvious lecture.

Feb. 5—15. Theatre Row, 410 W. 42nd St., NYC. Running time: 90 mins. with no intermission. bfany.org/theatre-row