![\"John](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thewrap.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/John-Lithgow-as-Roald-Dahl-in-Giant-Joan-Marcus.jpeg?fit=300%2C169&quality=89&ssl=1\")
\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\n\t\t\t'Giant' Broadway Review: John Lithgow Devours Roald Dahl for Breakfast<\/a>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
In the play\u2019s epilogue, at Willy\u2019s gravesite, Linda Loman tells us she \u201ccan\u2019t cry.\u201d Which is a shocker because Metcalf has had a hankie to her nose for the last 15 minutes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She’s not the only one in competition with Lane. Playing Biff Loman, the much-favored son, Christopher Abbott delivers an 11th-hour sobbing meltdown that screams, \u201cPlease, give me a Tony nomination!\u201d He might very well win the Tony, since those awards always favor the most acting over the best acting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Abbott can\u2019t deliver a sentence \u2013 no, make that a word — without puncturing it with a major hand gesture. His arms never stop waving. He\u2019s reaching for Al Pacino but ends up being Sylvester Stallone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What happens when Linda and Biff are bigger blowhards and glad-handers than Willy? Metcalf and Abbott\u2019s performances are so over the top they rob Lane\u2019s of any tragedy. Listening to this trio go after each other for nearly three hours, you just want them to shut up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the creakier aspects of this Miller classic is the role of Happy Loman. Poor Happy. When he says he\u2019s getting married, his parents tell him to go to bed. (Lane and Metcalf milk their back-to-back zingers to receive gales of laughter for their great comic timing.) The name Biff is repeated dozens of time, while Happy gets his mentioned only twice. This younger brother also calls himself Howard and Hap, both of which are huge improvements on Happy. Is that why Willy and Linda so aggressively ignore their second son? They don\u2019t like his nickname? In a truly bizarre bit of casting, Ben Ahlers plays the shunted, stepped over, disregarded and totally unacknowledged Happy despite this actor looking like the lead singer for the world\u2019s hottest new boy band. Ahlers manages to take inappropriate focus in other ways: He walks around bare-chested for the play\u2019s first half-hour. It’s easy to tell who’s getting the most selfie requests at the Winter Garden stage door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We\u2019re told the Lomans are a family, but Lane & Co. don\u2019t create one on stage. They’re physically unalike to the extreme. And why do Abbott and Ahlers speak with thick Brooklyn accents, and Lane and Metcalf do not?<\/p>\n\n\n\n In a recent New York Times interview, Joe Mantello discusses his major directorial flourish of having young doppelg\u00e4ngers for the characters Biff (Joaquin Consuelos), Happy (Jake Termine) and their friend Bernard (Karl Green and Michael Benjamin Washington). Both Mantello and the Times reporter treat this double-casting as a novel masterstroke, perhaps unaware that no fewer than three new productions of opera warhorses (\u201cI Puritani,\u201d \u201cLa Sonnambula\u201d and \u201cTristan und Isolde\u201d) at the old fuddy-duddy Met Opera feature doppelg\u00e4ngers for the lead singers. It is this theater season\u2019s big clich\u00e9, just as video-cam operators on stage was last season\u2019s (and a few seasons before that) most overworked gimmick.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The double-casting does work to provide a surreal fluidity to the proceedings, greatly enhanced by Chloe Lamford\u2019s stark scenic design (dominated by Willy\u2019s much-beloved car) and Jack Knowles\u2019 truly dramatic lighting. As with his direction of the actors, however, Mantello likes to pour it on gooey. Each act is introduced with Caroline Shaw\u2019s overly somber music, reaching for but failing to achieve Philip Glass profundity. The fog machine never stops. The overkill begins even before you enter the Winter Garden. Black-and-white photos by Thea Traff (doing her Brigitte Lacombe best) feature the lead actors in stiff poses, trying hard to look terribly serious and appearing really ridiculous.<\/p>\n\n\n![\"Death](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thewrap.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/death-of-a-salesman-2.jpg?resize=1024%2C576&quality=89&ssl=1\")
![\""Cats:](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thewrap.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Cats-Broadway.jpeg?fit=300%2C169&quality=89&ssl=1\")
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