She changed her mind when Marianne Elliott, the visionary director Cromwell assisted for six years, insisted her protégée give the tragic story of disillusioned, 63-year-old traveling salesman Willy Loman another shot. Elliott is known for her transformative casting, like her gender-swapped revival of Company, and she urged Cromwell to envision the Lomans as a Black family struggling to access the American Dream after World War II but before the Civil Rights era. "That completely unlocked the play for me," Cromwell says. "Suddenly I could see my dad as Willy Loman, and it felt so much more immediate."