‘Arthur would have liked it’: Anthony LaPaglia’s new play comes to Sydney

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Anthony LaPaglia thinks Arthur Miller would have approved of the recent Australian production of Death of a Salesman.

The pair became friends before the playwright’s death in 2005, when, in 1997, LaPaglia starred in A View from the Bridge on Broadway, a role that earned him a Tony Award.

Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman was Anthony LaPaglia’s first theatre role in more than 10 years.Credit: Jeff Busby

The new production, directed by Neil Armfield and starring LaPaglia, Alison Whyte, and Josh Helman, will tour to the Theatre Royal in Sydney in May.

It opened in Melbourne in September to glowing reviews, with LaPaglia performing as Willy Loman, the depressed salesman of the title. The action played out against a sparse set, a sports stand at Ebbets Field, the site of one of Willy’s favourite memories.

“I talked to him [Miller] about it a fair bit back in the day,” says LaPaglia. “He said he always liked the play, but he always hated that it ended up being in a proscenium type of setting – kitchen table, chairs, all that kind of thing.

“He had a really amazing set design, but they couldn’t practically build it; it was on three different levels. By creating the sports stand at Ebbets Field, I think that’s the closest it’s come to being how Arthur would have liked it to have been.”

The Melbourne run was the first time LaPaglia, best known for screen roles including Looking for Alibrandi and Holding the Man, had stepped on stage in more than 10 years. It was also LaPaglia’s first professional theatre role in Australia; the Adelaide-born actor performed in a community theatre production of John van Druten’s I Am a Camera in Sydney in the early ’80s, before he moved to the United States to pursue an acting career, at the age of 21.

LaPaglia first read Death of a Salesman in his 20s, performed scenes as Biff and his little brother Happy in acting class, and saw it for the first time on Broadway in 1999, with Brian Dennehy in the lead role. “I remember sitting in the theatre going, ‘that’s some play. I’ll just chalk that up in the back of my head as something I need to do’,” he says.

But earlier this year LaPaglia was convinced he may never have the chance to play Willy Loman. “[I thought] there’s so many productions of it going on, who’s going to want to do another one?” A week later, he was offered the opportunity to lead the Australian cast. Accepting was a no-brainer, especially as the SAG actors’ strike in the US limited the available screen roles.

Armfield (Things I Know to Be True; The Secret River) says that directing LaPaglia in Holding the Man in 2015 convinced him the actor would be the perfect choice to play Willy.

LaPaglia and director Neil Armfield in rehearsals for Death of a Salesman.Credit: Eugene Hyland

“He was able to carry such massive emotional strength and need, often with very few lines, often just his body and his face, his eyes especially,” he says. “Willy Loman fits him so perfectly that I just can’t now imagine anyone else in the role.”

LaPaglia is excited to bring his Willy Loman to Sydney. “I’m so happy we’re doing it again because there wasn’t a single night that I didn’t go out there and think, ‘ahh, this is fantastic. I love doing this’. And you don’t always think that, especially as you get older as an actor.

“What’s beautiful about plays is it’s two hours when you’re not interrupted; someone’s not yelling ‘cut’ and ‘do it again’. You get on a stage, and you own it, and you’re always discovering something new. It’s this continual process of refining it on an emotional level. I haven’t had to use that muscle for such a long time.”

Throughout the run, LaPaglia was the first person to arrive at the theatre, and the last person to leave. “I missed being a theatre rat. When I’m doing a play, I tend to live at them almost,” he says, with a laugh, before describing his pre-show ritual: organising his chaotic dressing room, buying supplies, and taking a nap.

“I’m a terrible sleeper,” he says. “But for some reason when I’m doing a play that one-and-a-half hour nap before the play is just like gold. Because it’s quiet. There’s no phone. No one’s bugging me. No one wants anything. It’s just my space.”

Beyond helping his sleep deficit, the Melbourne season had a deep impact on LaPaglia: it helped him to better understand his father, with whom he had a difficult relationship until his death in 2014. He drew on parts of his father to embody Willy, a travelling salesman struggling to make a sale, whose hopes for his sons’ futures border on delusion.

“Willy is very much like my father,” he says. “My father was also a salesman. My father was also extremely verbose, and very pushy with his sons.

“Since doing the play, I’ve started thinking about him more, and coming up with a different perspective on him. As I got older, I understood where his anger and stuff came from, but I think the play helped me crystallise some of it a little more.”

Death of a Salesman is at Theatre Royal from May 17 until June 23.

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