By Galen Simmons

Having now seen every play in the Stratford Festival’s 2024 season, I can confidently declare Salesman in China is my favourite.

This world premiere and potentially sleeper hit by Leanna Brodie and Jovanni Sy – the latter of whom also directs – is based on the true story of Death of a Salesman playwright Arthur Miller’s time in China working with the Beijing People’s Art Theatre to produce and direct his American classic for a Chinese audience in 1983, not long after the Chinese government opened up relations with the west. Miller (Tom McCamus) struggles to produce his play in a way that resonates culturally and makes sense to the Chinese cast and crew and, ultimately, the audience.

Through his relationships and conversations with the people around him, Miller gradually begins to understand how Chinese and American culture differ, and what parts of Death of a Salesman cross that cultural divide.

Specifically, his working relationship turned friendship with Ying Ruocheng (Adrian Pang), the Chinese actor, director and playwright willing to put his own reputation and life on the line to produce Death of a Salesman, and Ying’s fiercely supportive wife, Wu Shiliang (Jo Chim), who best understands what her husband is risking by staging this play and pushes him to be open with his American counterpart, provides Miller with the recent, historical context he needs for his play to hit home with Chinese audiences.

Understanding that both Ruocheng and Shiliang were imprisoned along with so many others by the Chinese government during the Chinese Cultural Revolution – a sociopolitical movement launched by Mao Zedong in 1966 with the goal of purging remnants of capitalist and traditional elements from Chinese society – ultimately helps Miller better understand the people he’s working with and producing the play for.

Miller’s own wife and Austrian photographer Inge Morath (Sarah Orenstein) helps open her husband’s eyes to the stark differences between American and Chinese culture, having learned what she could about China and its people before heading overseas. She urges Miller to try understanding and embracing those differences so he can find the cultural similarities in a play not about the American dream or the slow dissolution of capitalism, but about the relationships between fathers and sons.  

Members of the cast and crew also help Miller understand where and why his play does not translate culturally for a Chinese audience. Outspoken actor Zhu Lin (Phoebe Hu) plays a particularly pivotal role in helping Miller understand his own play from a perspective entirely different from his own.

Salesman in China is both beautiful and captivating to watch. From the traditional Chinese music and the use of image projection to portray particularly haunting moments and memories of the past to the use of lighting and stage space in having one scene flow seamlessly into the next, this production sets a new, high bar for what production value can be, something not seen at the festival since director Robert LePage’s Coriolanus in 2018.

The novel use of both English and Mandarin subtitles displayed on television screens built into a platform on the stage as actors’ dialogue alternates between the two languages not only makes the play fully bilingual, but, used in conjunction with image projection, portrays the cultural dissonance Ruocheng feels while trying to bring the American play he loves into the Chinese zeitgeist.

Just like the play within this play, Salesman in China is an instant classic and a production not to be missed – though I do believe there will be plenty of opportunities to see this play elsewhere after the 2024 Stratford Festival season ends.  

Salesman in China runs at the Avon Theatre until Oct. 26.