º£½ÇÊÓƵ

Antony Sher is exceptional as the weary, washed up Willy Loman in this stark and, at times, depressing Arthur Miller play.

The actor and partner of the play’s director Greg Doran has already shone in this theatre as the drunken, debauched Falstaff but is equally impressive as a portly Loman, battling against the tide, the American dream moving further from his grasp.

“I don’t want change, I want Swiss cheese!” he proclaims, desperate to hark back to a past where he was hopeful his son would make a success of his life and when he was “well liked” as a salesman in New England.

Harriet Walter is equally impressive as Willy’s sympathetic wife Linda, a woman desperate to keep her husband happy, prevent him from spiralling further into depression and re-ignite the lost relationship between him and his son Biff, who would rather earn a pittance as a farm hand than to clamber up the career ladder.

The play is set entirely in the Loman family’s Brooklyn apartment, once a place of hope where a young family enjoyed the garden but is now hemmed in by towering, imposing apartment blocks.

The clever use of light reflects different moments in time as well as Willy’s moods as he contemplates his death with the apparition of his more successful brother Ben.

A great cast throughout with Alex Hassell playing the great sporty, muscular Biff and Sam Marks as a philandering Happy.

Sher’s terrific delivery of Miller’s remarkable prose makes this Willy Loman feel like a great character from a Shakespearean tragedy and the RST is a fantastic setting for this play, as it marks the centenary of Miller’s birth.