Review: THE PRICE, Marylebone Theatre
This lesser-known Arthur Miller play is sluggishly paced and directed
Much like All My Sons, the virtuosic Arthur Miller tragedy revived in the West End earlier this year, Miller’s lesser-known 1967 play The Price holds a mirror up to the American Dream and finds people varying degrees of broken by their desire to succeed. “I want money,” declares a character early on. “Congratulations,” another drily replies.
In comparison to All My Sons, though, the stakes here are considerably lower. The Price’s drama is almost entirely of a financial nature. It’s also wholly concentrated in one room, an attic where estranged brothers Victor (Elliot Cowan) and Walter (John Hopkins) are deciding how to sell off furniture belonging to their late father, who was made penniless by the Great Depression, on the eve of his Manhattan townhouse being torn down.
Photo Credit: Mark Senior
And what a room it is. The star of this new production is undoubtedly Jon Bausor’s set, an Aladdin’s cave of Victorian furniture, dimly lit and caked in dust – it’s utterly believable that this attic has looked the same for 16 years. Every table, gramophone or evening dress from the closet seems to reveal something new about the brothers’ past; a rediscovered fencing sword from Victor’s teenage years leads to a scene that simmers with unspoken resentments.
The Price is not Miller’s finest play, due to the sluggish middle section involving hardball Russian Jewish antiques dealer Gregory Solomon, who is intent on telling the brothers that tastes have moved on since the Depression, and so should they. Henry Goodman brings what he can to a role that is demanding in terms of time on stage, embodying the character’s delicate balance of cynicism and joie de vivre. But it remains the case that too much of the first act is spent on setting up different characters’ philosophies, so that in the second the chickens come home to roost slightly too abruptly.
The play’s momentum does pick up in the second act, and this production marks Walter’s entrance with an ominous handshake and a thunderclap sound effect. It transpires that Victor sacrificed his college education to financially support his father, while Walter pursued his dream of being a surgeon; both have, of course, suffered unnecessarily for these decisions, and revelations about their father’s life ensue.
Photo Credit: Mark Senior
Hopkins’s slickly professional Walter is a well-considered counterpart to Cowan’s stoic police chief Victor, who is stubborn to a fault about his life choices, while Walter remains detached from his own struggles in his marriage and with mental illness. The two circle each other like hawks, waiting for an opportunity to prove that they have lived life in the ‘right’ way; Victor’s wife Esther (Faye Castelow) looks on, a casualty of his unrealised ambitions.
All of this cannot ignite a spark, though, in a stiffly old-fashioned production where director Jonathan Munby seems afraid to let his actors move, other than to sit down on a chaise longue before nervously getting up again. The effect is to make the pacing flaws in the script more obvious, and a lack of dynamism in scenes where the characters are discussing, say, the ins and outs charitable tax deductions. There is also an unfortunate commitment to strong New York accents for all cast members, which aren’t always confident enough for moments of emotive delivery.
Much that could be interesting about The Price – how we choose to remember our past choices and their consequences – is obscured by dry financial dialogue or excessive scene-setting. The play is an interesting curio from Miller’s oeuvre, but this production needs to make a stronger case for revisiting it.
The Price plays at Marylebone Theatre until 7 June
Photo Credits: Mark Senior
