The excellent revival of Arthur Miller's The Price currently on Broadway is a fitting companion piece to this season's earlier, acclaimed production of his Death of a Salesman. In fact, it stands ever more firmly at the forefront of Miller's canon.
Brought into rare contact by family circumstance, two brothers come to grips with the past as well as the future. One brother, an unmotivated and discouraged 50-year-old policeman about to be retired, and the other, a hyper-motivated and successful surgeon reconnecting with life after a breakdown, are thrown into a memory-filled arena as real as it is theatrical. Having forfeited his college career in order to care for a father who had been both emotionally and financially crippled by the Depression, the cop finds himself, 16 years after the father's death, bargaining in the attic of a soon-to-be-demolished Manhattan brownstone with an aged, second-hand furniture dealer. Presumably left alone by his anxious wife to negotiate with this "ethical" wheeler-dealer on a price for all the furnishings and nostalgic bric-a-brac, the cop is suddenly confronted by the appearance of his brother.
There is no lack of humor, particularly as compressed into the role of the appraiser. Bob Dishy is disarming as the extraordinary 89 year-old Solomon, the appraiser who can still find time in the middle of the deal of the century to sit down and eat a hard-boiled egg and claim he was once in the British Navy, as well as part of an acrobatic team ("They should rest in piece, I worked at the bottom"). Giving a performance of ever-increasing poignancy, Jeffrey DeMunn, as Victor the cop, creates a devastating portrait of an optimistic loser. Part smug, but resolutely honest, Harris Yulin gives the role of the surgeon just the right degree of pragmatic righteousness. And in a very difficult role, Lizbeth Mackay, as the cop's wife, does amazingly well for a complex character continually searching for the key to unlock her true feelings. The Williamstown Theater Festival first presented this production on August 19, 1999. As he did there, Naughton has directed this wonderful play with all the patience and attention to its emotional demands and physical detail that it deserves.
Some of the mammoth Victorian pieces that were gathering dust in Michael Brown's masterfully-cluttered attic setting, look to be a bargain at any cost. The same can be said for The Price.
