THEATRE PREVIEW: Actor has nothing to fear but Willy Loman himself

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Lea is playing Willy Loman, but he’s doing it under protest. (MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS)

DIRECTOR Mariam Bernstein: "Hello, I’m calling about whether you are interested and available next January to play Willy Loman at the Winnipeg Jewish Theatre."

Silence.

Bernstein: "In Death of a Salesman."

Silence.

Bernstein: "The Arthur Miller clas­sic."

Ron Lea: "I know, I know."

After being struck speechless by Bernstein’s offer over the telephone last year, the Canadian stage and screen actor couldn’t stop talking about reasons not to take the legend­ary part.

The actor, who looks like his early­50s age, pointed out he was too young to play the famous salesman. Then Lea argued he hadn’t taken on a role of this magnitude since theatre school in the ’70s. And he dismissed the idea of learning all those lines in under three weeks of rehearsal.

"I told her she was crazy, and I had to be totally out of my mind to do it, but I may never get this opportunity again," Lea said during an interview earlier this week.

"I’m scared s---less. I’ve never had a challenge like this in my life. As (for­mer Winnipeg actor) Jay Brazeau told me, ‘You’re doing the King Lear of the modern world.’" The name Ron Lea might not be famil­iar to most Winnipeggers, but like many actors in this country, he has become a recognizable face due to hundreds and hundreds of TV and film appearances. He is best known as the hapless Crown attorney in the long-running CBC-TV series Street Legal and lawyer Jack Angel in the more recent comic-drama

This is Wonderland.

This is his Winnipeg stage debut, but he came here in 1999 to shoot the sci­fi flick Escape From Mars, in which he played Jason, described as a mission control weasel. Maybe you remember him from the 2007 movie horror Saw IV , in which his creepy character gets impaled by a half dozen spikes through his chest.

"I got slaughtered," recalls the Mont­real- born, Vancouver-based Lea. "You know those films are all about finding new inventive ways of killing people.

Saw IV is what you call paying the rent. I was basically dressed in food colour­ing for 16 hours."

Saw IV and Death of a Salesman are two acting credits not typically seen on the same resume.

"I can guarantee absolutely I am the first Willy Loman to be in a Saw film," says the National Theatre School graduate.

Lea showed up in Winnipeg with his part memorized and his Brooklyn ac­cent nearly perfect. Of all the Willy Lomans he’s seen on stage, he liked the late Al Waxman’s performance best, even over the Judd Hirsch portrayal seen here at the Manitoba Theatre Cen­tre in 1997.

It is a personal pleasure to get to speak all those iconic Miller lines on a stage for the first time. One of his fa­vourites is, "You can’t eat the orange and throw the peel away.... A man is not a piece of fruit."

A Canadian actor, who like Willy must sell himself every day, can oc­casionally feel like a discarded piece of fruit.

"Sometimes we’re disregarded in this country," says Lea.

That prompted him to try another country, and he settled with his wife and twin daughters in Los Angeles from 1998 to 2001. But attention was not paid there either.

"It was a rough time to say the least," recalls Lea, who was asked to perform in last season’s WJT’s production of David Mamet’s Speed-the-Plow but was already booked.

"It was a tough nut to crack. I was there for three years and had 14 audi­tions. That’s really bad. I got four jobs out of them. I had to take work as a courier."

Lea is very upfront about the voices of doubt echoing through his mind. He is not sure he can pull off this prodi­gious acting challenge.

"I would imagine any actor would say that unless they’ve played Hamlet," says Bernstein, who is also stepping up into theatre’s heavyweight class. "Artists are plagued with doubts. Ron knows what he’s doing."

One way or another, Death of a Sales­man will be the highlight of Lea’s stage career.

"This will be something I will never forget," he says.

kevin.prokosh@freepress.mb.ca