Arthur Miller’s timeless tragedy, Death of a Salesman, with Neil Armfield at the helm, is set to return to the stages of Melbourne and Brisbane for a strictly limited season after its triumphant Australian staging in 2024. Anthony LaPaglia as Willy Loma, Alison Whyte as Linda Loman and Josh Helman as Biff Loman will all be reprising their roles in this critically acclaimed Australian production.
Helman, in his Green Room Award-nominated performance, was initially drawn to the production because he hadn’t done theatre in a long time, and he’d never done theatre professionally in Australia. “Nobody had ever asked before,” he says. “It was a combination of both that and the chance to work with Neil Armfield on a big American classic that made me want to take part.” What keeps the fire burning, for Helman, is the quality of the writing and the humanity in the play. “It’s gorgeous – though I get tired, the play never does.”
Helman says he was definitely a Miller fan before his involvement with the show but he obviously didn’t know his work as well as he does now. “I still haven’t read everything but after the first run of Salesman I revisited All My Sons, The Crucible, A View From The Bridge – I love his work. He’s a humanist. He doesn’t shy away. But he’s also not clever or intellectual. He works from the gut; he tells the truth. I love that about him. He cuts like a knife.”
Playing the conflicted and, in many ways, tortured Biff, Helman acknowledges that he and his character are quite linked sharing that they both had strained relationships with their fathers at times, despite the presence of deep love. “Biff is lost in a way to which I can relate. There’s always more to discover in each production, and I hope new strangeness and depth will come up this time. Biff, to me, is Miller’s answer to the play’s question; a possible answer, anyway. The question of how you choose to live, what you choose to value. That’s how I understand it, I guess.”
Miller penned his American classic, which starkly reveals the rotting underbelly of the American Dream, in 1949. Miller uses Willy Loman as the symbol of lost hope and mind as he navigates the treacherous ground that is his belief in an unattainable and essentially finely sculpted lie. Helman’s hope is that the play gets people really talking. “What I mean by that is we talk around things so much now. Politics, both international and domestic, is so full of bullshit rhetoric; social media is full of AI slop, misinformation and paid, branded content; we’re constantly being advertised to and sold on things and most of us don’t know what direction is even up anymore. We need to talk to each other, not at each other. That’s what art does at its best – remind us that we’re human, that we can’t live in isolation, that we’re all in this insane world together, and tog ether’s the only way through.”
A quintessentially American play by a quintessentially American playwright, the play nevertheless still connects with and penetrates through a universals filter. A masterpiece nearly 80 years old, Helman knows its relevance to Australian audiences.
“This production has some of our best actors performing some of the best words that have ever been written for the stage under the guidance of one of the best directors we have, ” says Helman. ” That’s a pretty easy sell in my eyes. LaPaglia and Ali Whyte alone are worth the price of admission. We’ve heard that from so much of our audience so far – people think this is a special production. And it’s relevant because it’s timeless, because it’s human. We’re all caught in the grip of making money, the difficulty and grind of it. Most of us grew up in families where certain things weren’t spoken about, and we suffered for it. Most of us are looking towards a hopeful future that may not ever arrive. This play tells us we’re not alone.”
Helman describes LaPaglia and Whyte as powerhouses adding that as annoyed as he gets by that word, it’s apt for them. “I adore them. They always made me feel like I deserved to be there, even when I didn’t feel it myself. That’s a great quality to have in leaders of an ensemble. Perhaps my highest praise is thus: I don’t ever get tired of doing this long-ass show eight times a week with them. With anyone else, it would probably be a struggle.”
Helman has been an actor since 2007 when he got his first professional acting gig in Home and Away and, as the saying goes, he hasn’t looked back. His impressive and varied resume includes the franchises Mad max and X-Men along with Thirteen Lives and Jack Reacher. Helman says he doesn’t know what interests him the most as an actor – he doesn’t like to over think it, admitting that he’s prone to that and finds it mostly unhelpful. “It all boils down to a good story, well told. I just want to be a part – no matter how small – of great things. I’d rather do one scene in a brilliant production than be the lead of a garbage fire. And don’t get me wrong, we’ve all known the hot stench of the garbage fire, but if I don’t need the money, I’d rather hold out for something that is going to light me up. I don’t think this is necessarily the “right” way, either – the person who wants to work, no matter the project, is probably staying sharper than I am. But that’s not me. (Sometimes I wish it was.)”
Directed by legendary stage and screen director Neil Armfield (Cloudstreet, The Diary of a Madman, The Secret River), this celebrated production offers theatregoers an unparalleled opportunity to witness the power of live theatre in a transformative experience.
Says Helman, “Seeing plays sometimes isn’t cheap, I get it. But if you make the effort to buy a ticket, make your way to the theatre, you might just have an amazing experience in a room full of strangers who are in the same boat as you are. You might make a friend, who knows. You might be moved! When’s the last time you were moved? And even if you go and you think it’s utter garbage, when you complain to your friends and family you can feel wholly justified because you actually made the effort to go. So, at best: a deeply moving communal experience. At worst: righteous indignation. Not bad odds.”
Her Majesty’s Theatre, Melbourne
11 – 22 August 2026
QPAC Lyric Theatre, Brisbane
28 August – 6 September 2026
salesmanaustralia.com.au
@SalesmanAustralia
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Production image: Jeff Busby
