Imanol Arias stars in Szuchmacher's version of 'Death of a Salesman'

Josep Maria Pou, director of the Romea theater, has always wanted to play the character of Willy Loman, from Death of a Salesman, by Arthur Miller, "a work, unfortunately, that is still terribly current".

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
24 June 2022 Friday 15:51
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Imanol Arias stars in Szuchmacher's version of 'Death of a Salesman'

Josep Maria Pou, director of the Romea theater, has always wanted to play the character of Willy Loman, from Death of a Salesman, by Arthur Miller, "a work, unfortunately, that is still terribly current". But he considers that he no longer touches him. However, at the age of 77, the Argentine actor Alfredo Alcón did not want to die without having embodied the maximum exponent of the collapse of the American dream.

With that objective, he asked his compatriot Rubén Szuchmacher to direct him in that company. The director got to work and, with the adaptation by Natalio Grueso, they distilled Miller's text that premiered in 2007 and that, tonight, Imanol Arias stars in Romea.

The popular actor leads the cast of this Okapi production that is "a critique of the American capitalist system," says Arias, who works with his son Jon. “Before making the decision to produce with my son, I had a huge desire. We work the piece without conditioning. In rehearsals, he realized that I was not well and that gave him an authority, a weight in the group, like the one he has in the work. And that has gone very well."

Arias refers to the “jamacuco” he suffered in rehearsals before opening at the Arriaga theater in Bilbao. “I had a lot of pressure and I was peté”, he confesses. Now, however, “arriving in Barcelona with 115 performances reassures me”. The cast is completed with Cristina de Inza, Carlos Serrano-Clark, Miguel Uribe Ara, Fran Calvo and Susanna Garachana.

About the work, Arias explains: “There is something underneath everything because Miller chooses the path of tragedy to explain the story. The protagonist is a 63-year-old man, who contradicts himself throughout the play and who admits that he was never a great salesman. Criticism is simple, it can be in a comic. The depth is the human tragedy and paternity”.

“A good vision of the American dream is not that of getting rich and people like you, but that of freedom. That is the great relevance of Miller and of his function, ”says Arias.

The version directed by Szuchmacher lasts barely two hours, half an hour less than usual. “It is a wild direction and it does not leave the viewer to breathe. You have the essence of the work, the verb and the actor without decoration”, he concludes.