The Price….

Last night we went to the intimate Marylebone Theatre to be engrossed and moved by Arthur Miller's play ‘The Price’.  This is one of Miller’s less known plays set during the depression and perhaps is best defined by Miller himself who once said - “Don't be seduced into thinking that that which does not make a profit is without value.” The play highlights the price we when we make that mistake!

The play is a drama about two estranged brothers, Victor and Walter Franz, who meet after 16 years to sell their late father's furniture. However it reveals a confronting and long-buried resentment and the true cost of their life choices. 

Victor's sacrifice to care for their father during the Depression is played out against Walter's successful but distant career as a surgeon. It is volatile, loud, intense and moving. 

Overseeing the negotiation is an elderly, wily appraiser, Gregory Solomon, who brings dark humor and wisdom to the emotional battlefield as the brothers' conflicting memories and justifications are revealed. 

His role is taken over in the second half of the play as the brothers express their frustration in the other. 

It is a play that will have an extended season following understandable rave reviews. 

Miller was a playwright of incredible courage and conviction and reflected the personal  and societal tensions that conflict America today. 

I hazard a guess that his plays will be more widely played out on the stage because of its resonance in today’s volatile and valueless world.