‘Price’ right, in the end
Interplayers Theatre’s earnest yet stolid production of Arthur Miller’s “The Price” proves once again that even average Miller is eminently worth watching.
This 1968 play, about two brothers dividing up their father’s estate, will stimulate both your intellect and your conscience. It explores classic Miller questions, including:
“Do we owe everything to our parents, at the expense of our own well-being?
“Is putting society above self a sucker play?
“What price do we pay in America for trying to live an ethical life?
Yet the brilliant philosophical probing of “The Price” comes at a price. This production drags a little, occasionally trying the patience of even the most receptive audience members. Under director Reed McColm, the actors achieved a kind of tense, quiet anxiety at moments when emotional fireworks might have been more bracing.
Yet “The Price” is so thoughtfully written and so well-constructed that by the second act I was no longer sweating the small stuff. I was deeply immersed in the knotty family history of brothers Victor Franz (Maynard Villers) and Walter Franz (Terry Snead). In addition to all of the moral questions Miller poses, there is one straightforward financial one: Is $1,100 a high enough price for their father’s entire estate?
Ah, that word “price.” It truly does lie at the root of this play. Both Victor and Walter have paid a price for their past decisions. Victor gave up dreams of college to become a New York beat cop and take care of his aging father. Walter abandoned his father, went to college and became a surgeon – at the price, Miller strongly suggests, of his soul.
Miller’s ultimate question is: Does every man truly have a price? At one point, the slithery Walter suggests a scheme that will earn everyone more than $1,100. He suggests talking the aging Jewish furniture dealer into appraising the furnishings at $25,000, then donating it all to the Salvation Army as a tax deduction, and, since Walter’s in a 50 percent tax bracket, making $12,500 off the deal and splitting it.
Miller is so good at showing the allure of these ethical traps that we in the audience are thinking, “Hey, that’s a great scheme,” long before we realize that it is, essentially, tax cheating.
Villers is every inch the solid and honorable beat cop, and he was especially good at showing Victor’s almost Hamlet-like inability to make a decision. Snead, in a too-tight blue suit, slyly showed Walter’s essentially slippery nature. He may be a surgeon, but his mouth and his gestures betray the soul of a gray-haired con man. Still, it wouldn’t hurt either actor to ratchet up the emotional temperature just a degree or two.
Maria Caprile does a good job with the essential role of Esther, Victor’s wife. She continually prods Victor not to be a doormat, to take a little something for himself – but she goes beyond that to symbolize the grasping nature of American society. Yet by the end, after the characters and audience go through the emotional wringer, Caprile softens into a touchingly supportive woman.
McColm gives the evening’s most striking performance, as the ancient furniture dealer, Gregory Solomon. McColm’s hands flutter, his posture is stooped, his voice has a tinge of the Old Country. It was an utterly convincing portrayal of a sometimes contradictory character. Solomon veers close to ethnic stereotype without ever slipping over that line.
I was distracted by several problems in the first act. In the opening scene, Villers roams wordlessly around the set to a background of bafflingly inappropriate New-Agey mood music. As mood-setters go, that was a bad start. Also, the stage had way too many dead spots in terms of lighting. There’s little excuse for that in a one-set play with hardly any light cues. We need to see the actor’s faces clearly at all times.
Yet this is not what I’ll remember about “The Price.” What I’ll remember is Arthur Miller’s touching, poignant ending, which suggests that maybe some people, like Victor, still do not have the one thing this play is truly about: a price.