Death of a Salesman on Broadway

Fresh from an acclaimed run in London, Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman comes to Broadway with Tony Award winner Wendell Pierce and Tony nominee Sharon D Clarke. Get Death of a Salesman tickets on TodayTix.

Death of a Salesman is one of the major must-see events of the fall Broadway season. You don't want to miss Pierce and Clarke as Willy and Linda Loman — their performances as this classic theatre couple earned critical acclaim, an Olivier Award nomination for Pierce, and an Olivier win for Clarke. And they're not just leading any 20th-century play. Many call the Pulitzer Prize-winning Death of a Salesman one of the best American plays of the 1900s, if not of all time, and its five past productions have earned a combined 13 Tony Awards. This Broadway revival is the first with a Black family at its center, bringing fresh insight into Miller's show about why not everyone achieves the American Dream.

Death of a Salesman is a play about an aging man named Willy Loman who, as he descends into senility, is also coming to terms for the first time with the hard truths he's long suppressed. Aged 60 when the play begins, Willy feels personally and professionally unfulfilled, and he must abandon his false, idealized memories and face the now-unavoidable feeling that it's too late to improve his life. He's chased wealth and stability by working the same career all his life, and he never got it. That's partly his exploitative company's fault, but Willy's unhappiness led him to gradually wreck his relationships with his family, and that's a failure of his own making. His wife, Linda, supports him, through it all, even though there's little she can do. Miller brilliantly explores the depths of one man's psyche in this bleak yet profound play.

See world-class actors perform in a masterwork of American theatre in Death of a Salesman in New York. Get Death of a Salesman tickets on TodayTix now.

“This Salesman doesn’t just transform the original — it unearths new treasures that have been buried in it all along. Any future rendition will rightly be measured against the ambitions and achievements of this stunning new production.” - New York Magazine

CRITIC’S PICK “SALESMAN IS MADE NEW AGAIN! Rich, electrifying and astonishing. The actors bring their characters to fully specific and vivid life. In this deeply original, deeply influential work, you may feel a shiver of recognition: the Lomans look like all of us.” - The New York Times

“Groundbreaking! This Salesman packs a mighty punch. Sharon D Clarke is brilliant, and Wendell Pierce gives a searing, powerhouse performance that adds deeper dimension to this monumental role. ” - Variety

“This powerful production registers the full seismic shock of this modern American classic. It’s unmissable!” - Los Angeles Times

Death of a Salesman premiered on Broadway in 1949, and the show won the Tony Award for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama that year. The play has been performed across the U.S. and globally in places like India, Germany, and China (where Miller himself directed a production), and renowned actors like Philip Seymour Hoffman and Dustin Hoffman have played Willy in various Death of a Salesman New York productions. There are also multiple Death of a Salesman film adaptations; Dustin Hoffman stars in one of those, too.

The 2022 revival of Death of a Salesman originated at London's Young Vic theatre in May 2019 and transferred to the Picadilly Theatre in the West End in October 2019. Pierce and Clarke led those productions, too, to critical acclaim, and co-directors Marianne Elliott and Miranda Cromwell won an Olivier Award for their work.

Pierce, best known as Detective Bunk Moreland on The Wire, is returning to Broadway for the first time in 10 years, since earning a Tony Award for producing Best Play winner Clybourne Park in 2012. This is his first time performing on Broadway since 1988. Clarke just got a 2022 Tony nomination for her star turn in Caroline, or Change last fall, and it feels like she never left Broadway.

What to Watch For

• Death of a Salesman is a "memory play." Though the play takes place in the present, much of the action unfolds in memories and flashbacks as the characters look back on their younger selves. Paula Vogel's Pulitzer Prize-winning How I Learned to Drive and the Tony-nominated MJ The Musical are other recent Broadway shows in this genre.
• Talk about range! Marianne Elliott co-directed Death of a Salesman in London alongside Miranda Cromwell, who directs the show solo on Broadway. Elliott also directed the nine-time Tony-nominated Company revival in both London and New York, and got Olivier and Tony nominations. Maybe Cromwell will follow in Elliott's footsteps and get her own Broadway directing nomination!
• Speaking of range, multiple Death of a Salesman cast members were just on Broadway in musicals before, too. In addition to Clarke, André De Shields, who plays Ben, is a Broadway veteran who most recently wrapped up his Tony-winning run as Hermes in Hadestown.
• Death of a Salesman has been on Broadway five times before since 1949. Revivals took place in 1975, 1984, 1999, and 2012; three of these won the Best Revival Tony.
• A New York Times review of the London production reads that, in casting the Lomans as Black, "race expands and exacerbates Willy’s suppressed fears that the world regards him as outcast, a loser, a clown," even as he's held tight to the "mythology and rules of the American dream of self-advancement."