Shoulders sinking forward beneath the weight of his well-worn brown, three-piece suit and hat, a 63-year-old salesman returns to his little house on an unknown Brooklyn street. As soon as he speaks, his hurried, yet tired cadence earnestly transports the audience back to 1949 and into the brooding head of Willy Loman.

A Pulitzer and Tony Award winning drama, “Death of a Salesman” was written by Arthur Miller and first debuted on Broadway in 1949. Centering around the demise of Willy (Norman Snow), the play depicts a middle-class patriarch with an overwhelming angst for his failed success.

In the theater department’s revival, which opened Nov. 4  in the Campus Theatre, a well-rounded ensemble of professional and student actors wield the story of a common man’s struggle to reach his American Dream.  The family dynamic that surrounds him strikes a completely relatable chord with the audience.

The set design and stage management, under the direction of John DeMita, cleverly establishes walls and staircase where none physically exist.

And just as tangible as these walls, which divide the scenes, are Willy’s sporadic thoughts spanning from painful memories of his past to the current reality of his life.

In the first act, Willy’s dialogue sets the mood.

“It’s all right,” Willy responds more dejectedly than matter of fact, “I’ve come back.”

Immediately, Willy reveals that he’s been lying to his family, to the audience and to himself.

But despite Willy’s failures, his doting wife, Linda Loman (Peggy Flood), kneels to remove her husband’s constricting shoes and replaces them with slippers.

Continuing to bolster Willy’s morale with an unfailing loyalty and deep love no matter the condition of their life, Linda proves to be the most complex character in the play and acts with effortless strength.

Through Flood’s perfectly balanced tones, which venture between a girlishly affectionate tone to a wearily matron-like dialogue, she makes believable her love for her husband. As her character strives to keep a family together, she furiously scolds her grown sons, Biff Loman (Nick Cagle) and Happy Loman (Clifford Cisneros), for the lack of deference toward their father.

“Attention must finally be paid to such a person,” Flood demands of them and the world.

In one of the most powerful scenes of the play, Biff, Willy’s eldest son, ponders his internal turmoil over accepting his true self-worth versus rising to the inflated expectations set by his father.

Adding to the dynamic cast, 20-year-old theater arts major, Cisneros, nails the smooth-talking, womanizing and often ignored little brother, Happy, who is ironically the comedic counterpart to Biff.

Together with supporting cast members, Flood, Cagle and Cisneros move seamlessly across Snow’s character’s realities to help piece together exactly how the American Dream was broken.

Though the title of Miller’s play leaves little suspense as to what becomes of the protagonist, “Death of a Salesman” keeps its audience in suspense as they follow the desperate but understandable paths of Willy Loman.