Andy Arnold’s no-thrills approach to this touring Death Of A Salesman is a timely, rather fine capsule of a perpetual exhaustion which lingers over us all, seemingly without end. It is, though full of potent performance, a touch too effective in its display of furrowed and languid men scrambling to retain their voice in a world where the pedlar is crowned or forgotten, momentarily losing the sophistication in Arthur Miller’s language. 

Willy Loman, salesman, husband and father, has found that he’s no longer any of these men. It’s in this desperation which David Hayman magnificently opens to the audience; the weeping energy of a fractured man who once commanded the room with patter and embellishment. Or at least, that’s the story he sold. And even if it was just one hell of a pitch, the audience connect to it through the calibre of his performance; Beth Marshall’s understated control as Loman’s wife Linda is a counter to re-affirm the empathy Loman squanders, while welcome energy arrives from Charlene Boyd as the unnamed Bostonian and Daniel Cahill who plays Willy’s troubled son Biff.

This minimising of the American man’s scale is reflected through Neil Haynes’ set design which features a dismantling the neighbourhood (the Lomans are the only presence left in this burnt world of fatigue). Articulate and lit well by Rory Beaton, it feels expansive, the weight and intimacy of it all whispering away the further the language leaves these performers’ lips.

Death Of A Salesman tours until Saturday 3 May; reviewed at Festival Theatre, Edinburgh.