Linda Emond has been an "actor's actor" and a critical darling since she made her New York stage debut, in 1996, in Leslie Ayvazian's "Nine Armenians...

Now at the Barrymore, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman as Willy and Andrew Garfield as his lost son Biff, this soulful lament of missed dreams and misguided desires is staged with aching sensitivity by Mike Nichols.

So packed is this tragicomedy of ideas that I am not yet over its delirious seriousness: What can you expect when everyone on stage talks at once, rapid fire, idea obsessed, passionate?

Kushner has produced a play also reminiscent of Arthur Miller at the top of his form, a play about which many ticket buyers will conclude he's equaled Miller's best.