For roughly the first quarter of playwright Eleanor Burgess’ ingenious comic drama “Wife of a Salesman,” both plot and characters seem predictable and reductive, albeit cleverly written. We’re in 1950something Boston. The women on stage at Glencoe’s Writers Theatre are named only The Mistress and The Wife. They represent the supporting female characters in Arthur Miller’s truly devastating tragedy “Death of a Salesman,” that seminal tale of a middle-aged man—Willy Loman—who succumbs to despair because he’s not being paid enough attention.
In Miller’s Pulitzer-winner, the wife character, Linda, and the unnamed mistress, exist solely in the orbit of the titular salesman. With “Wife of a Salesman,” Burgess gives the women their own play, having The Wife (Kate Fry) confront The Mistress (Amanda Drinkall) in the latter’s apartment.
