Peter Viney's Blog

The Price
by Arthur Miller

Directed by Jonathan Church
Designed by Simon Higlett

Theatre Royal, Bath
Tuesday 21st August 2018, 7.30 pm

CAST:
David Suchet-  Gregory Solomon
Brendan Coyle- Victor Franz
Adrian Lukis – Walter Franz
Sara Stewart – Esther Franz, Victor’s wife

Bath Theatre Royal on an August evening

It’s not an Arthur Miller I’ve seen before. It dates from 1968, and this is a 50th Anniversary revival. I checked the very comprehensive Toppings Bath bookshop plus the huge Waterstones and our favourite, Mr B’s Bookshop, and they all had most of Miller in different editions, but no copy of The Price. Maybe it had sold out. I think we all know which are Arthur Miller’s four greatest plays. Look at any collection.

Simon Higlett’s outstanding set design

The critics loved this production “one of Miller’s best plays” says Michael Billington. “One of the most richly affecting plays about family resentment ever written,” says Domenic Cavendish. I do think Cavendish is right in suggesting it will be box office gold in the West End. However, I’m more inclined to the 1968 critic who called it “a museum piece.”  Regular readers will know my long aversion to the classic commercially-driven American play format:

* One very elaborate set
* A cast of no more than four
* Two star names in the cast are essential
* Put their names over the title (even if the other two say as much in the script)
* lots of emotive monologues
* Preferably the classical unity, run as a single time frame.

Usually I add “unless it’s by Arthur Miller.” Though not this time.

A perennial local issue on classic American drama is that special accent, “British actors doing American.” Three of them are here. We had had dinner in a nearby restaurants surrounded by real Americans on all sides.

Brendan Coyle as Victor begins alone in the oldapartment

Technically, Brendan Coyle is the lead as Victor Franz. Victor= victim. He is the dutiful son who gave up a science career to look after dear old dad, accepting a lowly career as a police officer.  He is bottled up, dulled, resentful (all of which Doyle presents extremely well). He stonewalls. Hears, but doesn’t “listen.” Dad was a multi-millionaire who lost his all ($2 million in 1929 money, which the programme points out is $27 million today) in the 1929 Crash leading to the Great Depression. His less-talented brother, Walter, became a surgeon, and they haven’t spoken in years. Dad died sixteen years earlier. The play opens with Victor in the old attic apartment where the family lived after they lost everything. It’s been abandoned for sixteen years, but the building is being demolished and they have to clear the piles of junk or maybe they’re antiques. Victor’s wife Esther arrives. They’re awaiting the arrival of an antique dealer, Gregory Solomon, who will buy the lot. This is a pretty dull dialogue scene I thought, a slow start, except for the fun with his old fencing gear.

Scene 1: Brendan Coyle & Sara Stewart. Odd. Her suit looked green under the lights.

Then Mr Solomon arrives … David Suchet, playing an 89 year old Lithuanian-Jewish dealer. He instantly lights up the stage, and the very best part of the play – brilliant stuff  – is the next half hour where they try to negotiate a price, or rather Victor vainly tries to get him to commit to a price. Just at the end, brother Walter, unseen for decades, turns up. Black out. Interval.

Is the price right? David Suchet as Solomon & Brendan Coyle as Victor

It’s always bad practice to have Act 2 longer than Act 1. It is here by 15 or 20 minutes. The lights go up on a freeze frame of where they went down.

Brotherly love: Brendan Coyle as Victor, Adrian Lukis as Walter

Is the deal on or off? Walter claims he wants nothing, but then after a while, Walter and Esther decide the furniture is worth $3000 (or $3,500 according to Esther) rather than the $1100 Solomon has offered. Victor is willing to take the original deal. Walter and Esther look down on him as weak, and an easy prey to Solomon.

Walter (Adrian Lukis), Solomon (David Suchet), Victor (Brendan Coyle)

The old man falls ill and retires to the bedroom, only to appear briefly and sporadically afterwards, and his absence was vastly to the detriment of my enjoyment. Walter decides he can give the old man a small $50 appraisal fee to sign a high valuation of $50,000 as a complex tax deal where the whole lot of furniture then goes free to charity and Walter gets a tax deduction of $25000. He offers Victor half. He offers Victor a job. This is also ‘The price’ for Walter to pay off for his years of ignoring the family, and getting the success that Victor should have had. Victor doesn’t want to be paid off. Esther, in the background, is furious with him. Then again Walter reveals he is divorced, neurotic, has spent three years in a state of “breakdown.”

Walter remembers the whole past story differently to Victor, and in more detail. This rings true as so often shared memories differ widely in interpretation and detail, even between siblings. Walter reveals all the stuff that the martyr Victor never worked out. Victor is told the old dad had some money all along, as had Walter, but neither lent him the money for a degree. Victor doesn’t want to be part of a tax fiddle. He doesn’t want Walter’s charity. He’d rather take Solomon’s cash. The play ends with a gleeful Solomon and a superb lighting change into the blackout.

I didn’t much like the intrinsic play. I was slightly bored in the long wordy sections of Act Two with Walter and Victor,  which could have been done more succinctly. It was pretty repetitive. Was it me? It was fine at exploring its themes, at bringing out the deep hidden family stuff, but somehow didn’t move me as theatre.  Well, it did. I woke up in the night depressed about our past own family stuff as a result. I’ve re-read all those 4 star reviews … 5 stars in The Telegraph. It’s partly a rehash of classic Miller themes from All my Sons / Death of A Salesman. There’s a lot of autobiographical connection. The difference is that we don’t see the aging head of the family here, who spent much of his life sitting in a chair as a victim. The deliberate contrast is having Gregory Solomon in his place. It’s very conventional as a play, though beautifully and elaborately designed here by Simon Higglett with excellent detailed lighting.

David Suchet as Gregory Solomon

David Suchet is astonishingly good, on such a roll as Mr Solomon that every one else is cast into shade whenever he appears.  I guess that’s written in … he is supposed to be a vibrant life force at 89, compared to the two miserable siblings at fifty. Solomon has had four wives, lived in six countries, gone bankrupt, had a daughter commit suicide (in 1916) but is still surviving with a zest for life and looking forward to more. I found myself waiting and wishing for his ever briefer appearances from the bedroom. The set is the other star.

The final scene: David Suchet as Gregory Solomon

It is definitely not a lost Miller masterpiece, though Gregory Solomon IS one of Miller’s better character creations. If you take number of lines or stage time, you’d have to say he was a supporting role, but it’s rightly Suchet’s image on the fliers and programme.

“One of Miller’s best plays”? It’s a question of definition. A View From The Bridge and The Crucible are ones I’ve seen at various levels, from 6th form school play upward in the case of The Crucible. I’ve done lights, played the immigration officer, played Marco in different amateur versions of A View From The Bridge. They work at any level. I could only envisage The Price performed by top level professional actors, as it was here. However, that’s also true of Death of A Salesman. There is a difference between “one of the best Miller plays” and “one of the best productions of a Miller play” in recent years. This is certainly the latter. I do not think it’s the former.

Like What’s On Stage, I’m on three stars. BUT I will get a copy and read it. Themes do resonate, but it’s too low on theatricality for my taste.

***

Trivia: Brendan Coyle plays the dutiful cop son. Brendan Coyle was Mr Bates in Downtown Abbey. Right next door in Bath’s Ustinov studio, Phyllis Logan is starring as Patricia Highsmith in Switzerland. She played Mrs Hughes in Downton Abbey.

PROGRAMME

At last! The Theatre Royal has got rid of those compendium “whole summer season” programmes and gone for a single play one, as I’ve wanted for years. It’s a very good idea to include the page translating all Miller’s sums of money into 2018 values.

PERFUME ALERT

A woman near us had poured half a bottle on. When she sat down people in a ten yard radius were sneezing. We felt breathless and choked with ethanol (the propellant).  It’s worse than beer. Why do people do it?

WHAT THE CRITICS SAID
5 star
Domenic Cavendish – The Telegraph, *****
4 star
Michael Billington – Guardian ****

On its Broadway debut in 1968, Arthur Miller’s play was dubbed by one critic “a museum piece”. If it is, it has stood the test of time and now emerges in Jonathan Church’s superbly acted production with David Suchet in the show-stealing role of the old furniture dealer, as one of Miller’s best plays. Michael Billington

Robert Gore-Langton, Mail on Sunday **** (Show of the Week)
Susannah Clapp, The Observer ****
Ann Treneman, The Times ****
Maxie Szalwinska, Sunday Times ****
Jeremy Brien, The Stage ****
3 star
Kris Hallett, What’s On Stage ***

ARTHUR MILLER ON THIS BLOG
All My Sons by Arthur Miller, Talawa Theatre at Salisbury Playhouse
A View From The Bridge by Arthur Miller, Young Vic
Death of A Salesman, by Arthur Miller, RSC 2015
The Crucible by Arthur Miller, Old Vic
The Price, Bath, 2018

JONATHAN CHURCH
An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde, Classic Spring 2018
Racing Demon, by David Hare, Bath 2017
Hobson’s Choice, by Harold Brighouse, Bath 2016
Mack & Mabel, Chichester Festival Theatre, 2015
Amadeus, Chichester Festival Theatre, 2014

DAVID SUCHET
The Importance of Being Earnest, by Oscar Wilde, London 2015

ADRIAN LUKIS
The Seagull, by Chekhov, Chichester 2015
The Taming of The Shrew, RSC 2012

SARA STEWART
Hay Fever by Noel Coward, Bath 2014