When we see Willy’s boss Howard treat him so dismissively, it may no longer be just because of his age. When we see the restauranteur Stanley setting up a private dining room for the Lomans, we no longer discern special treatment for a pal, but an effort to keep them out of sight of his white diners. The change in the race of the Loman family is reflected in the music and in some trivial changes to the text (Willy’s high school football star son Biff now wants to go to UCLA rather than the University of Virginia, because UVA did not admit Black people in 1949.) But the change is not trivial for the audience it changes the context. McKinley Belcher III as Happy, Khris Davis as Biff, Willy’s sons But for all the boldness of the reimagining, and the stellar track record of so much of the cast, “Death of a Salesman” is a disappointment in several ways. These two formidable talents do give largely invigorating performances, and the recasting of the Lomans as a Black family certainly offers a fresh take on a play that’s been steadily produced since its much-acclaimed Broadway debut in 1949. Similarly, anybody who saw Sharon D Clarke in last season’s “Caroline or Change” is aware of her powerhouse singing, and her gift for vivid characterization. Unlike some past Willy Lomans, Pierce is not a hunched-over ghostly figure, but a man with the same imposing physical presence as Detective Bunk Moreland in The Wire, the role for which Pierce is best known.

The hope for that same kind of vital transformation is surely what is behind the casting of Wendell Pierce as Willy Loman, Sharon D Clarke as his wife Linda, and other Black actors as Willy’s family, in this sixth Broadway production of Arthur Miller’s modern tragedy about an ordinary American. The “Death of a Salesman” that opens tonight on Broadway begins and ends with the people around Willy Loman literally singing the blues - the music that turned the bitterness and exhaustion of the African American experience into something powerful and beautiful.

Death of salesman play script