Word: biff
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Worried about retirement? Don't be. Little Biff and Betsy are just a few years from college? No sweat. Vacation house? Go ahead. Heck, chuck all your financial concerns, including those about social time bombs like a deficit-ridden federal budget and the financial squeeze on Social Security. Omnipresent and omnipotent, the stock-market god will take care...
Perils lurk for the male thriller writer giddy enough to cast a woman as the hero of a biff-bam adventure series. Just how hard can she bop the bad guys without coming off as an ape in drag? And how much can she fiddle with makeup or fret over runny panty hose before a reader of either sex decides that yeah, yeah, too much verisimilitude is unreal...
...dreary everyday. Armstrong's Willy is a small man, too downtrodden even to rail with much conviction. It's an elegant production, the dominant stage image a tree in full blossom, with a broken trunk. The big scenes are somewhat muted (Marjorie Yates' Linda and Mark Strong's Biff are good if unmemorable) but the small ones achingly poignant--like the mix of awe and desolation with which Willy marvels at next-door neighbor Bernard's success: "Your friends have their own private tennis court?" What emerges most clearly in this version is Miller's critique of capitalism: Willy...
Miller depicts what he calls "the tragedy of the working class" in Willy Loman (Hal Holbrook), a salesperson whose idealism leads him to ignore his status as an insignificant cog in the American economic machine. Even when his favorite son, Biff (Matt Mulhern), confronts him with this reality as his wife Linda (Elizabeth Franz) watches in tears, Willy refuses to acknowledge his mediocrity...
Mulhearn's Biff matches Holbrook's Willy blow for blow. His character's psychological simplicity cannot subvert the complexity and fire Mulhearn infuses in his performance. Even when it's painfully evident why he does everything he does (e.g. he steals because his father taught him to), his emotional turmoil is still affecting...