When the Great Depression cost his family their fortune, Victor Franz gave up his dream of an education to support his father. Three decades later, Victor has returned to his childhood home to sell the remainder of his parents' estate. His wife, his estranged brother, and the wily furniture dealer hired to appraise their possessions all arrive with their own agendas, forcing Victor to confront a question, long-stifled, about the value of his sacrifice.
One of the most personal plays by the consummate voice of the American everyman, Arthur Miller's The Price is a riveting story about the struggle to make peace with the past and create hope for the future. Steppenwolf co-founder Terry Kinney (reasons to be pretty) directs.
DeVito, playing the kind of irreverent, hilarious, irritation-generating dynamo that he also does so brilliantly on film-steals the audience's attention, especially when it comes to consuming an egg, the shell of which he cracks with his cane. He then eats it with the gusto that Cookie Monster attacks his cookies. His character is 89, and in a long, colorful life has been three times married and somehow acquired a discharge from the British Navy. But he, too, is hiding a family tragedy, and DeVito's emotional register shifts perfectly at the moment of its revelation. Hecht skillfully does as much as she can do with very little, Miller's vision of her seems beached between acquisitive shrew and frustrated peacemaker, with little shading in between-it is Hecht's subtle coquettishness that adds an edge to her interactions with Walter. Shalhoub is also unexpected: he looks as smooth as any stage villain should yet his desire for money isn't simple greed, and he doesn't patronize his brother, despite having materially achieved so much more. He puts the price of his beautiful coat at "two gallstones"-operated on "a big textile guy" who keeps sending him things.
Victor (Mark Ruffalo), a working-class cop, blames his estranged brother, the well-heeled Walter (Tony Shalhoub), for abandoning him and their broken father during the Great Depression. When they meet to sell the old man's furniture, it's the first time they've seen each other since his death 16 years earlier. Harsh words are spoken; old wounds bleed afresh. Ruffalo and Jessica Hecht, as Victor's frustrated wife, do creditable work, but Shalhoub falters; although he is persuasive at first, when Walter floats on silky smarm, his emotional scenes have a tinny ring. The play winds up in the pocket of Danny DeVito, making his Broadway debut as a charming old ganef of a furniture dealer. With so much character and history compressed into his small body, he is a good match for the play. After dominating the first act, DeVito mostly disappears for the second, and the revival's energy flags without him. Only when he's onstage does The Price seem right.
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