London Theater Review Part 3: Miller's The Price in a gripping production
The Price
Written by Arthur Miller
Directed by Jonathan Church
Starring Brendan Coyle and David Suchet
Wyndham’s Theater, London
February 26, 2019
Arthur Miller (1915-2005) is often included in the US
playwright “holy trinity” of Miller, Tennessee Williams, and Eugene O’Neill. In
my experience, though, I have found most US productions of his plays a tad
melodramatic, with the working class-in-agony depictions in Death of a Salesman or A
View from the Bridge often coming across as sophisticated soap opera. The
British seem to love him, and I had heard that their productions are often
superior to Americans’. So I sampled one in London, and it definitely rose to the
occasion.
The Price (1968) is
less familiar to audiences than some of the other Miller plays, but I think it
deserves more recognition. It is based on a familiar setup, the family
gathering. Here, NYC cop Victor Franz (Brendan Coyle) arrives at the antique
shop of his deceased father to clean it out and sell off the goods.
His wife pushes him to get top dollar (“the price”) from the aged Jewish dealer Gregory Solomon (the fantastic David Suchet), but Victor seems resistant, and just wants to get out of the building. The reasons for his reticence are revealed later in the play, when his brother Walter, a successful physician, arrives. The brothers have not seen each other for over a decade, and while superficially glad to reunite, there is underlying tension. It turns out that Walter abandoned the family long ago to pursue his career, leaving Victor to care for his demanding father, and thus sacrificing his own plans to become an engineer. Victor blames his brother for his dead-end career as a cop, and his general sense of life failure. But was this Victor’s choice, or was he really a victim of his brother’s selfishness? The play is therefore built on filial resentment, and “the price” we pay for decisions earlier in life. It’s also very resonant in this era of failed aspirations of the white middle class—Miller shows us that these resentments are not unique to the millennial era. Thus, the play has a timelessness equal to Death of a Salesman, and is less trapped in its era than All My Sons, The Crucible, or A View from the Bridge.
His wife pushes him to get top dollar (“the price”) from the aged Jewish dealer Gregory Solomon (the fantastic David Suchet), but Victor seems resistant, and just wants to get out of the building. The reasons for his reticence are revealed later in the play, when his brother Walter, a successful physician, arrives. The brothers have not seen each other for over a decade, and while superficially glad to reunite, there is underlying tension. It turns out that Walter abandoned the family long ago to pursue his career, leaving Victor to care for his demanding father, and thus sacrificing his own plans to become an engineer. Victor blames his brother for his dead-end career as a cop, and his general sense of life failure. But was this Victor’s choice, or was he really a victim of his brother’s selfishness? The play is therefore built on filial resentment, and “the price” we pay for decisions earlier in life. It’s also very resonant in this era of failed aspirations of the white middle class—Miller shows us that these resentments are not unique to the millennial era. Thus, the play has a timelessness equal to Death of a Salesman, and is less trapped in its era than All My Sons, The Crucible, or A View from the Bridge.
The production was excellent. The set featured a
disorienting high inwardly sloping wall covered with chairs and other
furniture. The odd angles gave a sense of disorientation that matched that of
the actors who were thrown into a foreign emotional environment. For once, the
British cast had good authentic New York and other accents, not some generic
southern or New England twang that I have heard in other London productions (I suspect
the Brits feel the same about the English accents of American actors). Director
Jonathan Church kept things moving, and the pace of the action built to a
really good emotional climax, like Miller plays should. Brendan Coyle’s Victor
was outstanding. His chunky body type and physical presence suggested chronic
fatigue, as if life had passed him by. Yet there was a smoldering anger buried
there that could come out if provoked, e.g. by his physician brother’s platitudes
about fate and how he was lucky to become a rich physician. Think of Victor as
a less comic version of Jackie Gleason’s Ralph Kramden, another prototype of
the frustrated middle class worker.
David Suchet, a famed British actor not known to me, gave a virtuosic turn as the aged Jewish furniture dealer. He somehow walked the tightrope between anti-Semitic clichés and comedy, hard to do in this role where money and profit was the goal. He sneaked, cajoled, laughed, flirted, lectured, calculated—changing his approach from second to second.
I think this mix of humor into the play is what made it successful, and less mired in pathos than other Miller plays. The evening flew by, and I remained gripped by the story and the performances throughout. I hope The Price is performed more in the USA, especially in this era when we are reflecting on the decline of the middle class man.
David Suchet, a famed British actor not known to me, gave a virtuosic turn as the aged Jewish furniture dealer. He somehow walked the tightrope between anti-Semitic clichés and comedy, hard to do in this role where money and profit was the goal. He sneaked, cajoled, laughed, flirted, lectured, calculated—changing his approach from second to second.
I think this mix of humor into the play is what made it successful, and less mired in pathos than other Miller plays. The evening flew by, and I remained gripped by the story and the performances throughout. I hope The Price is performed more in the USA, especially in this era when we are reflecting on the decline of the middle class man.
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