Birth of a Salesman

The same spicy, irreverent humor that characterizes LR Penn's fiction is to be found in abundance in his first full length theatrical work. Davis Goodman, the play's hero, sold out the dreams and ideals of his youth when he moved to Long Island and became a real estate salesman, seduced by the comfort and security of a suburban bourgeois lifestyle. As he approaches his fortieth birthday, however, he is plagued by serious concerns about his career satisfaction, his wife's fidelity, his daughter's moral character, and his family's avid consumerism. Like Willy Loman in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, Davis is pining away for a lost golden era and is being destroyed by a rapidly changing world to which he has failed to adapt. Davis manages to avoid Willy's tragic end by embarking upon a wild spiritual odyssey during which an ex-con, a shrink, a call girl, and a teen mom help him to reconcile his Woodstock generation values with the realities of twenty-first century living.