Several Broadway male performances center on difficult men who try to preserve authority, status, and self-image as the world changes. Nathan Lane in Death of a Salesman plays Willy Loman as a man who keeps charming, flattering, joking, and bullying even while everything collapses, revealing panic beneath bravado. John Lithgow in Giant portrays Roald Dahl as witty, intelligent, theatrical, provocative, and casually cruel, dominating through intimidation while retaining the charisma that once excused him. Alden Ehrenreich in Becky Shaw works in a subtler, unsettling way as a wealthy charmer who orbits a dysfunctional situation. Richard Thomas in The Balusters similarly emerges as an unsettling presence within ensemble dynamics.
"Rather than portraying Willy Loman as quietly defeated, he plays him as a man still furiously trying to charm, flatter, joke, and bully his way through life even as everything collapses around him. Director Joe Mantello's stripped-down production allows memory and reality to blur together, while Lane attacks Arthur Miller's language with enormous rhythm and force. Willy remains manipulative and emotionally exhausting, but Lane reveals the panic underneath the bravado: a man terrified that the world no longer has use for him."
"Lithgow's Roald Dahl in Giant exerts a very different kind of control. Mark Rosenblatt's play imagines a confrontation following backlash over Dahl's antisemitic remarks in 1983, and Lithgow dominates almost effortlessly through wit, intelligence, and intimidation. His Dahl is funny, theatrical, provocative, and casually cruel. Yet Lithgow also captures the charisma that allowed people to excuse him for so long, making the character all the more unsettling."
"Ehrenreich's work in Becky Shaw operates on a smaller, sneakier scale. Max is a wealthy, sharp-tongued charmer who enters the play as the seemingly sophisticated outsider orbiting a deeply dysfunctional"
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