LaPaglia delivers a career-best performance in Death of a Salesman at the Festival Theatre

Death of a Salesman review: Anthony LaPaglia comes home to a haunting Willy Loman

Adelaide Festival Theatre, until 4 October

Some plays feel like museum pieces by now. Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman isn't one of them. More than 75 years after it won the Pulitzer, Neil Armfield's production shows how much Willy Loman still has to say about a man who measures his worth by sales, appearances and being "well liked". It opened at the Adelaide Festival Theatre on Saturday night, and it's one of the most affecting nights of theatre Adelaide will see this year.

This is Anthony LaPaglia's Adelaide stage debut, which feels overdue for a local boy with a Tony, an Emmy and a Golden Globe to his name. His Willy is a man who has spent a lifetime lying to himself. He believes he's a big shot, that his sons are destined for greatness and that success is always one handshake away. The tragedy is watching reality close in on him. Every lost sale, every unpaid bill and every disappointment from Biff chips away at the fantasy until there's nothing left to hold his mind together, and he slides into madness.

The production's smartest move is how it handles the flashbacks. Rather than tidy scene changes, the past bleeds straight into the present. Willy is talking to his brother Ben or his teenage sons one moment and standing in his kitchen the next, while his family looks on, baffled. It shows us his memories and his confusion at the same time: a man losing track of where and when he is, reliving old conversations as if they were happening now. It's unsettling, and it makes Willy's unravelling feel painfully real.

"Anthony LaPaglia gives a performance of staggering range: blustering and proud one moment, lost and childlike the next. You can't take your eyes off him." - Monica

Alison Whyte is heartbreaking as Linda, the wife who holds the house together while everything under it gives way. She sees exactly what's happening to Willy, the lies, the confusion, the quiet signs that he's giving up, and she carries all of it largely on her own. What makes her so moving is that she never stops hoping. She defends him to their sons, keeps believing things can turn around, and insists that "attention must be paid" to a man the rest of the world has written off. Whyte makes that loyalty feel like both her strength and her tragedy.

As the Loman sons, Josh Helman and Ben O'Toole are phenomenal. Their American accents are spot on, and both disappear completely into their characters. On paper, Helman's Biff is the failure of the family: the former football star who never made anything of himself, drifting from job to job and letting his father down. In reality he's the only Loman who sees clearly. He understands what actually matters in life and knows he was never cut out for the rat race his father worships. His clashes with Willy, as he tries to make him accept who they really are, are some of the most gripping moments of the night. O'Toole's Happy is the opposite, all swagger and charm, a man still chasing the same hollow version of success that broke his father. Together they feel like real brothers, shaped in very different ways by the same house.

Marco Chiappi and Anthony Phelan are amazing to watch as Charley and Uncle Ben, the two men who show Willy what his life could have been. Chiappi's Charley is the steady, decent neighbour who keeps lending Willy money and even offers him a job, only for Willy's pride to turn it down. Phelan's Uncle Ben drifts in and out of Willy's memories like a ghost, the brother who walked into the jungle and came out rich, and a reminder of the dream that always stayed out of reach. The local talent shines too. Mark Saturno pulls double duty as Willy's boss Howard and the waiter Stanley, James Smith plays the studious Bernard, and Luca Sardelis doubles as Jenny and Letta, alongside Paula Arundell as The Woman and Elizabeth Blackmore as Miss Forsythe. I loved the whole cast and could rave about every one of them, but you'll just have to go and see for yourself.

The production premiered in 2023 and has had acclaimed seasons in Sydney, Perth, Melbourne and Brisbane. Adelaide has finally got its turn, and it's well worth the wait.

Death of a Salesman plays at the Adelaide Festival Theatre until 4 October for 11 performances only. Tickets at adelaidefestivalcentre.com.au.