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COURTESY OF HAWAII PACIFIC UNIVERSITY
Willy Loman, played by Don Pomes, points an accusatory finger at his son Biff, played by Scot Davis, while wife Linda, played by Sylvia Hormann-Alper, and son Happy, played by Joshua Gulledge, look on.




Staging another death. Hawaii Pacific University tackles the tough American classic


By Shawn "Speedy" Lopes
slopes@starbulletin.com

Considered by many to be the first great American tragedy, "Death of a Salesman" is as relevant now as it was when Arthur Miller penned it more than a half-century ago, attests Hawaii Pacific University Director of Theater Joyce Maltby. "This play's always been special to me," she says of the Pulitzer prize-winning story. "I think (Miller) reveals such wonderful truths and statements about human life, about the individual in society and family. And he does it not by being didactic or preachy in any way, but by having characters reveal themselves through very believable, realistic relationships. It was very ahead of its time."


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COURTESY OF HPU
Po'okela Award winner Don Pomes plays Willy Loman.


"It's an American classic," adds Don Pomes, who plays Willy Loman in the HPU production, which runs this weekend through December 8. "It's a wonderful play, but one of the most, if not THE most, difficult play I've worked on."

Even for Pomes, a Po'okela Award-winning stage and television veteran who has worked alongside such heralded actors as Katharine Hepburn and Robert Ryan and in several major network series, "Death of a Salesman" poses an interesting challenge. In addition to the complexities of the story's protagonist, he says, its true-to-life dialogue, which made the play innovative in its day, also makes the script doubly hard to master. "I don't think I've ever worked on a play quite like it before. Everybody's interrupting each other. It may have been the first play that audiences were given a chance to see people in a natural thought process on the stage."

As Loman comes to the startling realization that he may actually be worth more dead than alive, "Death of a Salesman" asks its audience to examine its own perceptions of success and the American Dream. "Willy is always living for dreams, for things to be better, but things haven't worked out and he gets to the point to where there is no other answer other than suicide," says Pomes. "He lives so much with what could have been or what might have been that he doesn't enjoy what is."

Pomes, by contrast, is enjoying his life as a retiree, who in recent months has happily immersed himself in the role of Willy Loman. "I don't have a normal day; my life is as abnormal as Willy's is," he chuckles. "I'm retired, so I spend the whole day working on it, not only internalizing the lines, but trying to understand the character better and looking for stronger motivation. You're constantly finding new and different things in doing it. It's really stripping down to the bare bones what people are like; what motivates them, what moves them, what encourages them. It's their hopes, their dreams, their destruction."


"Death of a Salesman"

Where: Hawaii Pacific University Theatre,
45-045 Kamehameha Highway
When: 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 4 p.m. Sunday and 7:30 p.m. Thursday. Schedule repeats through Dec. 8,
with no performance on Thanksgiving, Nov. 28
Tickets: $14 general; $10 seniors, military and students
Call: 375-1282




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