Hartford Stage has tabbed an acclaimed stage, TV and movie actor to play Willy Loman in its upcoming production of Arthur Miller’s classic drama “Death of a Salesman,” from Feb. 27 through March 29, 2026.
Hartford Stage announced Monday that Peter Jacobson will play the leading role. Jacobson is best known for playing plastic surgeon Dr. Christopher Taub in nearly 100 episodes of the medical mystery TV series “House.” He joined the series in 2007 after it had already been on for several seasons and was a regular character through its final season in 2012.
The rest of the cast has not yet been announced. The show will be directed by Hartford Stage artistic director Melia Bensussen, who staged Miller’s “All My Sons” at the theater in 2024.
Jacobson was born in Chicago and studied acting at Brown University in Rhode Island and at The Juilliard School in New York City. His recent film credits include “Violet,” “Dark Highway,” “Fly Me to the Moon” and “Smile 2.” Besides “House,” he is known on TV as Proxy Alan Snyder in the science fiction series “Colony” and for a recurring role as Agent Wolfe in “The Americans.”
Jacobson’s New York theater credits range from two renditions of Clifford Odets’ politically charged 1930s ensemble drama “Waiting for Lefty” (including the acclaimed 1997 revival directed by Joanne Woodward), “The Taming of the Shrew” for the outdoor New York Shakespeare Festival (as Tranio) and the premiere productions of a number of new plays, from Craig Lucas’ “The Boom Box” in 1996 to Nassim Soleimanpour’s “Nassim” in 2019.
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“Death of a Salesman” is a modern tragedy which elevates the plight of a small-time salesman to the stuff of epic drama. The other key roles in the play include Willy’s wife Linda, his sons Biff and Happy, his dead brother Ben who appears in dream sequences, his employer Howard, his neighbors Charley and Bernard and a romantic fling from Willy’s past identified only as “The Woman.”
The original production of “Death of a Salesman” won five Tony awards including Best Play and Best Author of a Play. The script also won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Notable Willy Lomans over the years have included Lee J. Cobb (who originated the role in 1949), George C. Scott, Connecticut native Brian Dennehy, Dustin Hoffman, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Wendell Pierce, Charles S. Dutton, Avery Brooks, Christopher Lloyd, Anthony Paglia, Rod Steiger, David Suchet and Richard Dysart.
Miller, considered one of the greatest playwrights of the 20th century, was a longtime resident of Roxbury. He wrote “Death of a Salesman” in the small writing studio he built near his house. The studio building has been the subject of a restoration and relocation project spearheading by Miller’s friends and supporters in Roxbury. Miller died in 2005.
Miller had a long association with theaters in Connecticut, notably the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, which opened its inaugural season in 1965 with his “The Crucible” and went on to stage most of his best-known works including “All My Sons,” “A View from the Bridge” and “The Price,” as well as world premieres of “Broken Glass” and the evening of one-acts “2 a.m.” But Long Wharf never did “Death of a Salesman.” Another New Haven theater, the Yale Repertory Theatre, staged “Death of a Salesman” with a nearly all Black cast, starring Charles S. Dutton as Willy Loman, in 2009.
Bensussen, who became artistic director of Hartford Stage in 2019, has regularly programmed dramas by major American playwrights. Besides Miller, the theater has recently staged works by Eugene O’Neill and August Wilson. She has said she wants this new Hartford Stage production of “Death of a Salesman” to explore some of the Jewish themes in Miller’s play.
“Willy Loman lives in the space between memory and reality, hope and regret,” Bensussen said in a statement announcing Jacobson’s casting. “Peter brings tremendous compassion and clarity to that terrain, and I can’t imagine a more compelling actor to take on this role.”