Joe Mantello Credits “Death of a Salesman ”Revival's Success to This One Major Change (Exclusive)

Dave QuinnMon, June 1, 2026 at 2:15 PM UTC

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Joe Mantello at the opening night afterparty for 'Little Bear Ridge Road' at Michael's New York on Oct. 30, 2025
Credit: Bruce Glikas/WireImage -

Joe Mantello's revival of Death of a Salesman provides new layers to the Arthur Miller classic due to one major change the director made

The production is nominated for nine 2026 Tony Awards including Best Director

Mantello opens up to PEOPLE about his instinctive creative process and long-standing collaborations with stars Nathan Lane and Laurie Metcalf

Joe Mantello isn't interested in reinventing classics just for the sake of reinvention.

But when the acclaimed actor and director first began thinking about helming a new Broadway revival of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, he knew there was one element of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play he wanted to leave behind.

"Pretty much from the beginning, I knew that I didn't want it to be set in a house," Mantello, 63, tells PEOPLE.

It was a bold decision. Since its Broadway debut in 1949, Death of a Salesman has become one of the most revered works in the American theatrical canon, with generations of productions centering the action of the drama within the walls of the Loman family's modest Brooklyn home.

That's certainly how Miller envisioned it. In his stage notes, the playwright specifies the setting as "Willy Loman's house and yard and in various places he visits in the New York and Boston of today."

Laurie Metcalf, Chris Abbott, Ben Ahlers and Nathan Lane in 'Death of a Salesman' on Broadway
Credit: Emilio Madrid

Mantello's version — which is up for nine 2026 Tony Award nominations, including Best Revival of a Play, Best Director and acting nominations for stars Nathan Lane and Laurie Metcalf — stripped that physical architecture away, opting instead for a more open, dreamlike environment that reflects the play's fractured sense of time.

But the director insists the choice wasn't motivated by a desire to put a new spin on a classic. "That was not the impulse behind it," he says. "We didn't do it in the way that we're doing it just to be different."

Instead, Mantello says the staging reflected something he'd long seen in Miller's masterpiece. "It really has been the way in which I've always read this play," he explains. "For whatever reason, that's just how I've experienced it."

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The creative gamble paid off. Mantello's strikingly minimalist production places audiences inside Willy Loman's increasingly haunted perspective, drawing focus to the memories, emotions and anxieties driving his unraveling.

"It places you squarely in a psychological space," Mantello says. "The scenes in the past are very much happening in real time for him."

Laurie Metcalf and Nathan Lane in 'Death of a Salesman' on Broadway
Credit: Emilio Madrid

The shift also allowed theatergoers to discover new nuances in words they've heard for decades.

"One of the things that happens when you remove the physical architecture of that house and you just really have actors in the space is that you hear the words in an unadorned, very pure way," Mantello says. "Because all you really have are those bodies in space and the text, and there's nothing else to distract you."

"People have kept saying to all of us, 'Did you make any changes? Did you add anything? This version, I'm hearing things that I've never heard before!' " he recalls. "And we haven't. That's just taking walls away."

Joe Mantello at the opening of 'Hillary and Clinton' in April 2019
Credit: Andrew H Walker/Variety/Penske Media via Getty

If Mantello makes the choice sound simple, it's only because he's spent a career honing an artistic intuition that recognizes when a radical idea is worth following.

Over the past three decades, the Rockford, Ill., native has established himself as one of Broadway's most influential artists, winning Tonys for directing Take Me Out and Assassins while also helping shepherd landmark productions like Wicked, The Boys in the Band, Other Desert Cities, Casa Valentina and The Humans to the stage.

He's equally respected as an actor, having earned Tony nominations for Angels in America and The Normal Heart and racked up a number of on-screen credits including Feud: Capote vs. The Swans.

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Joe Mantello in 'Feud: Capote vs. The Swans'
Credit: Pari Dukovic/FX

Yet despite the accolades, Mantello says his creative process remains remarkably simple.

"It's just something I know instinctively when I read it," he says. "With a new play, I can usually tell by the fourth or fifth page if it's not for me. There's just a gut feeling I have."

Mantello's picker has occasionally led him to pass on projects that later became huge hits. "I've read great scripts that have gone on to be incredibly successful, but I just knew that they weren't for me," he says. "I had nothing additive. And I've really learned to trust that instinct."

Joe Mantello and Laurie Metcalf pose at the 2026 Outer Critic Circle Awards in New York City
Credit: Bruce Glikas/Getty

Of course, great directors don't just choose the right projects. They know how to get the best out of their actors. And Mantello has a long history of cultivating incredible performances from his collaborators.

For proof, look no further than Metcalf and Lane. Mantello has spent years collaborating with the two stage veterans, both together (in 2008's November) and separately.

Lane began working with Mantello early in the director's Broadway career, appearing in the original cast of 1995's Love! Valour! Compassion! before returning to work with him a decade later in the 2005 revival of The Odd Couple.

Metcalf, meanwhile, has become Mantello's most frequent Broadway collaborator. Death of a Salesman is their eighth production together, including The Other Place (2013), Hillary and Clinton (2019) and, earlier this season, Little Bear Ridge Road.

Nathan Lane in 'Death of a Salesman' on Broadway
Credit: Emilio Madrid

Years of working together have given Mantello a clear understanding of what makes both actors exceptional. And that advantage starts before rehearsals even begin, as Mantello famously asks his actors to show up on the first day with their lines completely memorized.

"There's a thing that can happen sometimes with actors in rehearsal, which is that they're holding something in reserve and they'll show you glimpses of it because they're still in process. And when you come in off-book, as a director, I can begin to shape based on what it actually is going to be," he explains. "You're not having to project and say, 'Well, in three weeks, this will probably be something.' It accelerates the process tremendously."

Lane and Metcalf, both 70, are pros at that, which Mantello says is key to their magic.

"With Nathan and Laurie, they're never holding back. Everything is shared from the moment you start rehearsals," he says. "The two of them are very, very similar. They're at 100%. And so that, as a director, is exciting. They take big swings and you can say, 'You're either going down the right road or the wrong road.' They're also very open and ask lots of questions. They'll come and say, 'Well, what if it's this?' "

"They're just remarkable actors," he adds. "When you work with Laurie Metcalf and Nathan Lane, you're ahead of the game. They make it easy."

Death of a Salesman is running at Broadway's Winter Garden Theatre through Aug. 9. And while its success may have earned Mantello another Tony nomination, the director says he's learned to view his career through a wider lens.

"You realize when you've done this long enough that you're just part of a larger conversation," he says. "It's bigger than, 'Are you up or are you down?' Or, 'Are you in or are you out? '"

That's the benefit of longevity: understanding that any single success is just one chapter in a much larger story.

"I think of my career as horizontal, not vertical," he says. "It's my whole body of work that will be the final word on my career, not one award. And hopefully, if you're lucky, you leave behind a few things that mattered."

Tickets to Death of a Salesman are now on sale. The 2026 Tony Awards will take place at Radio City Music Hall on Sunday, June 7. The show will be broadcast live to both coasts on CBS (beginning at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT), and will stream on Paramount+.

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