THIS week the audiences of the Edinburgh King’s Theatre were treated to a masterclass in production and acting thanks to the Royal and Derngate’s incredible tour of Arthur Miller’s 1949 classic play, “Death Of A Salesman”, writes our theatre critic Kerry Black.

Having studied it for Higher English many years ago, then seeing it in Glasgow in 1987, I wondered why it is revived so often. The answer is simple, it is relevant today as it was almost 70 years ago, when it was attacked by the FBI for its un-American values.

With an incredibly stark set constructed from opaque panels, with an overhead neon light glowing with the word “LAND OF THE FREE” and only a faded double bed, fridge and dining set as scenery, the focus is all on the acting and what a cast!

Tim Pigott-Smith was supposed to be playing Willie Loman but tragically died just before the tour. Instead the central role was given to the magnificent Nicholas Woodeson, who shuffled onto the stage in his faded grey suit and battered hat, carrying his cases of samples and his dreams.

Willie is married to the long suffering Linda (tenderly played by Tricia Kelly), who spends her life trying to save enough to pay the bills, while living on hope and darned stockings.

America has sold them a dream that if only you work hard enough, you can have exactly what you want in life. A dream they have passed to their sons Biff and Happy, who are in fact a couple of complete wasters.

The whole family have spun so many lies into their colourless little lives that they believe them. While Ben Deery’s Happy is portrayed as a bit of a sleazy rogue, Biff (the brilliant George Taylor) is the only family member who seems to have any grasp of the truth, although he admits to resorting to crime to give him his own American Dream. While Willie’s successful brother Ben (Mitchell Mullen)continually haunts him as a symbol of all he never attained, jealousies come to a head when he sees how much his neighbour Charley (Geff Francis) and his son Bernard (Michael Walters) have achieved.

The opaque screens and platforms allow the story to unfold smoothly as it flows from past to present as the ghosts of Willie’s broken dreams, come to a climax where he scatters the stage with soil as his life crumbles around him. Will he die the Death of a Salesman in green velvet slippers, loved and known to all, or just be another forgotten hard worker?

To see the answer, head to the King’s Theatre, Edinburgh this week.