Wendell Pierce to Star in ‘Death of a Salesman’ on Broadway

Wendell Pierce is ready for another run as Willy Loman.

The American actor, best known for his work in “The Wire,” first took on the titanic title role in “Death of a Salesman” in London in 2019, and even then he hungered to bring the performance to New York.

Now he’ll get that chance: A group of producers announced Monday that they would transfer the London production to Broadway next season.

Pierce will once again star opposite Sharon D Clarke, a British actress who wowed critics and audiences in New York this season with her star turn in a revival of the musical “Caroline, or Change.” Pierce and Clarke played the husband and wife, Willy and Linda Loman, at the Young Vic in London, and then in the West End; Clarke won an Olivier Award as best actress.

“I have waited for this moment for a long time — I’m so excited to do this classic American play and join the fraternity of artists who have brought it to life,” Pierce said in a telephone interview. He called the role “the American Hamlet,” and said he had seen many of the best-known performances — Dustin Hoffman, Brian Dennehy and Philip Seymour Hoffman onstage, as well as Fredric March and Lee J. Cobb on film. “It will challenge me, not just as an artist but as a man, to take the time to be self-reflective and consider all the themes in this play: Are my best days behind me? Where have I lost hope? What do I want to leave behind? That’s a worthwhile journey of self-reflection to go on.”

“Death of a Salesman,” often regarded as one of the greatest American plays, is about a traveling salesman whose career, and mental state, are falling apart. The play, by Arthur Miller, opened on Broadway in 1949 and won both the Pulitzer Prize for drama and the Tony Award for best play; it has been revived on Broadway four times, winning a slew of Tony Awards over the years.

This latest production, with the blessing of the Miller estate, offers a new take on the play’s inherent tensions by portraying the Loman family as African American and the other characters (co-workers, neighbors and a love interest) as white.

André De Shields, who this month wraps up his Tony-winning run as Hermes in “Hadestown,” will join the cast as Willy’s deceased brother, Ben. And Khris Davis (“Sweat”) will play Biff, one of the Lomans’ two sons.

The Broadway production will be directed by Miranda Cromwell, who in London directed it alongside Marianne Elliott. Elliott will remain with the show as a producer.

Cromwell, in an interview, said “it’s the same production, but some things will shift as we refine it.” She also said that, as a mixed-race woman, “there are elements of my lived experience that I’ve brought to the production.”

She added: “So many of the elements of the play are fundamentally questioning of the American dream, and when you put that through the perspective of the Black experience, that enriches it — the obstacles are harder, and the stakes become higher through this lens.”

The revival will be produced by Cindy Tolan, best known as a casting director; Elliott & Harper Productions, which is Elliott’s production company with Chris Harper; and Kwame Kwei-Armah, who is the artistic director of the Young Vic.

The producer Scott Rudin had previously been planning to bring a “Salesman” revival to Broadway starring Nathan Lane and Laurie Metcalf; he stopped working as a producer after being criticized for the way he treated others, and the team behind the London revival was able to pick up the rights to bring their production to Broadway.