Return of Arthur Miller's Masterpiece 'Death of a Salesman·Trial'

Park Geun-hyung and Son Sook in "Death of a Salesman"
At Sejong Center until March 3
"The Crucible" cast includes Um Ki-joon and Kim Soo-ro

Arthur Miller, the third husband of American actress Marilyn Monroe, was a representative playwright of 20th-century America. Two of Miller's masterpieces, which swept the prestigious Tony Awards, are being staged one after another.

Death of a Salesman opened on February 7th last month at the Sejong Center M Theater and is scheduled to run until March 3rd. About a month later, from April 9th to 27th, The Crucible will be performed at the CJ Towol Theater in the Seoul Arts Center.

Theatrical performance scene of 'Death of a Salesman' [Photo by Show & Tell Play]

Death of a Salesman premiered on Broadway in February 1949. That year, it swept the major theater awards including the Tony Awards, Pulitzer Prize, and New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Play. Especially at the Tony Awards ceremony, it won six awards including Best Play and Best Author, marking a milestone in theater history. Since then, Death of a Salesman has been consistently revived on Broadway and won the Tony Award for Best Revival three times in 1984, 1999, and 2012. It has also been adapted into films and dramas multiple times, recognized for its timeless artistic value.

The Crucible premiered on Broadway in January 1953 and won Best Play at the Tony Awards and New York Drama Critics' Circle Awards that same year. At the Tony Awards, it received honors in four categories including Best Play and Best Author. This work has also been adapted into films several times. Notably, the 1996 version starred Daniel Day-Lewis and Winona Ryder, with Miller himself adapting the screenplay, which attracted much attention. Daniel Day-Lewis, who played the lead role, is also Miller's son-in-law.

The cast lineups are impressive. Death of a Salesman features Park Geun-hyung, Son Byung-ho, Son Sook, Ye Soo-jung, Lee Sang-yoon, and Park Eun-seok. The Crucible is set to star Um Ki-joon, Kim Soo-ro, Nam Myung-ryul, and Jin Ji-hee. Park Eun-seok will also appear in The Crucible, adding weight to the production.

The protagonist of Death of a Salesman, Willy Loman, is a man in his 60s. He was a successful salesman in his youth but fails to adapt to the rapid social changes brought by the Great Depression and faces the threat of retirement. His two sons, on whom he had high hopes, fail to secure decent jobs, leading to growing conflicts with his children and pushing Loman’s life into a corner.

Theater play 'Siryun' 2019 performance scene [Photo provided by Double K Entertainment]

The Crucible is a play based on the real witch trials that took place in Salem, Massachusetts, USA, in 1692. During the Salem witch trials, villagers accused each other of witchcraft, resulting in over 200 imprisonments and 19 executions by hanging, with a total of 25 people losing their lives. The Puritan ethics and discipline that dominated Salem at the time led villagers to indiscriminately accuse neighbors with whom they had poor relations of immorality and breaking rules, labeling them as witches. Many were punished based solely on testimony and suspicion without clear evidence. Miller wrote The Crucible in the early 1950s to criticize the collective hysteria of McCarthyism, which swept the United States in pursuit of rooting out communists.

Death of a Salesman was produced by the performance planning company Show & Tell Play and premiered at the National Theater’s Daloreum Theater in 2023. The Crucible was produced by Double K Entertainment, a performance planning company founded by actor Kim Soo-ro, and returns to the stage after six years since its premiere at Dongguk University’s Lee Hae-rang Arts Theater in 2019. Kim Soo-ro will play the role of Thomas Putnam and also serve as the general producer for this production.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.