Sets.DS

====In the introduction to his // Collected Plays //, Miller acknowledges that the first image of //Salesman// that occurred to him was of an enormous face the height of the proscenium arch; the face would appear and then open up. "We would see the inside of a man's head," he explains. "In fact, // The Inside of His Head // was the first title. It was conceived half in laughter, (60) for the inside of his head was a mass of contradictions" (23). By the time Miller had completed // Salesman //, however, he had found a more subtle plays correlative for the giant head; a transparent setting. "The entire setting is wholly, or, in some places, partially transparent," Miller insists in his set description (11). By substituting a transparent setting for a bisected head, Miller invited the audience to examine the social context as well as the individual organism. Productions that eschew transparent scenery eschew the nuances of this invitation. The transparent lines of the Loman home allow the audience physically to sense the city pressures that are destroying Willy. "We are aware of towering, angular shapes behind [Willy's house], surrounding it on all sides. The roofline of the house is one-dimensional; under and over it we see the apartment buildings" (11-12). Wherever Willy Loman looks are these encroaching buildings, and wherever we look as well. Willy's subjective vision is expressed also in   the home's furnishings, which are deliberately partial. The furnishings indicated are only those of importance to Willy Loman. That Willy's kitchen has a table with three chairs instead of four reveals both Linda Loman's unequal status in the family and Willy's obsession with his boys. At the end of Act I, Willy goes to his small refrigerator for life-sustaining milk (cf. Brecht's parallel use of milk in // Galileo //). Later, however, we learn that this repository of nourishment, like Willy himself, has broken down. That Willy Loman's bedroom contains only a bed, a straight chair, and a shelf holding Biff's silver athletic trophy also telegraphs much about the man and his family. Linda Loman has no object of her own in her bedroom. Willy Loman also travels light. He has nothing of substance to sustain him. His vanity is devoted to adolescent competition. ====




 Chairs ultimately become surrogates for people in // Death of a Salesman // as first a kitchen chair becomes Biff in Willy's conflicted mind (28) and then an office chair becomes Willy's deceased boss, Frank Wagner (82). In, perhaps, a subtle bow to Georg Kaiser's // Gas I // and // Gas II //, Miller's gas heater glows when Willy thinks of death. The scrim that veils the primping Woman and the screen hiding the restaurant where two women will be seduced suggest Willy Loman's repression of sexuality.