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Somewhere in the bowels of Lincoln Center, Laurie Metcalf was in a rehearsal room, quietly conferring with the director Joe Mantello. It was February, days before the new Broadway revival of Arthur Miller\u2019s \u201cDeath of a Salesman\u201d would move into the Winter Garden Theatre. Four weeks into rehearsals, the cast\u2014led by Nathan Lane, as the delusional, doomed salesman Willy Loman\u2014was still refining the Loman family\u2019s implosion. Metcalf, playing Willy\u2019s enabling wife, Linda, had read the play in high school but had purposefully avoided ever seeing a production. \u201cI thought maybe down the line I\u2019d be able to play the part, so I didn\u2019t want somebody\u2019s performance in my head,\u201d she explained. The same went for Martha in \u201cWho\u2019s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?\u201d and Mary Tyrone in \u201cLong Day\u2019s Journey Into Night\u201d\u2014characters that Metcalf had tackled in the past decade and a half. \u201cI stayed away from bucket-list-type roles, just in case,\u201d she said, then let out a hearty laugh. \u201cAnd now, in my dotage\u2014here they come!\u201d<\/p>\n
Metcalf\u2019s turn as a Broadway eminence was far from assured. Since the nineteen-eighties, TV audiences have known her as the rootless, rubbery Aunt Jackie, from the sitcom \u201cRoseanne.\u201d The more stage-savvy know her as a charter member of Steppenwolf Theatre Company, the red-blooded Chicago troupe that emerged in the seventies and launched such talents as John Malkovich, Gary Sinise, and Joan Allen. In 2017 and 2018, Metcalf won back-to-back Tony Awards, for Lucas Hnath\u2019s \u201cA Doll\u2019s House, Part 2\u201d and Edward Albee\u2019s \u201cThree Tall Women\u201d; she was simultaneously nominated for an Oscar, for her role in Greta Gerwig\u2019s film \u201cLady Bird.\u201d She was hailed as the new First Lady of American Theatre, a moniker once given to Helen Hayes. In the Times<\/em>, Ben Brantley wrote that Metcalf had attained the stage career \u201cthat Meryl Streep might have had, had she not abandoned Broadway for Hollywood.\u201d<\/p>\n None of this acclamation has imbued Metcalf with grandeur. At seventy, she remains a workhorse. She excels at playing women with hardened exteriors, rough edges, and working-class muscle\u2014salt-of-the-earth people, with extra salt. That is certainly true of her Linda Loman. At Lincoln Center, Metcalf was dressed simply, in jeans and a worn \u201cThree Tall Women\u201d hoodie. (\u201cHer wardrobe is made up of merch from shows she\u2019s done,\u201d Mantello observed.) The cast, which that morning had sat through mandatory harassment training\u2014\u201cSo, there\u2019s that,\u201d Metcalf said, flatly\u2014included Christopher Abbott and Ben Ahlers, as Willy and Linda\u2019s deadbeat sons, Biff and Happy. They took their places for a climactic scene in Act II in which Linda berates her sons for their shoddy treatment of their father, who is crawling in the dirt outside, his mind unravelling, planting a garden in the middle of the night. Mantello has done away with the naturalistic kitchen-sink set; in the rehearsal room, a plywood box stood in for a red 1964 Chevy that would dominate the stage. In the scene, Linda tosses aside a bouquet of flowers which her sons have bought to appease her and yells, \u201cGet out of my sight.\u201d Metcalf gave the line a venomous hiss, before raising her voice to a shriek. \u201cI got too hot too fast,\u201d she told Mantello afterward, rescoring Linda\u2019s emotional melody.<\/p>\n Nathan Lane, who plays Willy Loman in \u201cSalesman,\u201d was eager to have Metcalf in the role of his wife, Linda: \u201cI knew that she would find this strength and fierce protectiveness toward Willy, and that it wouldn\u2019t be sentimental in any way.\u201d<\/span>Photograph by Emilio Madrid<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n The scene was interrupted when one of Lane\u2019s prop seed bags burst, spilling everywhere, and the cast devolved into hysterics. Lane, turning hammy, bellowed, \u201cI\u2019m hoping to have an entire salad come the spring!\u201d Clowning around, Metcalf and Ahlers went into a little bowlegged hop. Then it was back to work. I sat behind a table, next to a man in a brown sweater who watched intently through wire-rimmed glasses. It was the producer Scott Rudin, who, more than anyone, is responsible for Metcalf\u2019s prolific third act. In 2021, amid allegations that he had bullied his staff (abusive tirades, thrown office supplies), Rudin stepped back from his career as a pugnacious Broadway titan with exquisite taste. After a four-year exile, he returned, last fall, with Samuel\u00a0D. Hunter\u2019s play \u201cLittle Bear Ridge Road,\u201d starring Metcalf as a hard-bitten Idaho nurse. By doing \u201cSalesman,\u201d she was doubling down on their partnership, even though Rudin remains a controversial figure in the business.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Somewhere in the bowels of Lincoln Center, Laurie Metcalf was in a rehearsal room, quietly conferring with the director Joe Mantello. It was February, days before the new Broadway revival of Arthur Miller\u2019s \u201cDeath of a Salesman\u201d would move into the Winter Garden Theatre. Four weeks into rehearsals, the cast\u2014led by Nathan Lane, as the … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29754,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Laurie-Metcalfs-Third-Act-The-New-Yorker.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29753"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29753\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29755,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29753\/revisions\/29755"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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