Review: THE PRICE at Marylebone Theatre

We open with beat cop Victor Franz (Elliot Cowan) amidst the stored furniture of his late father’s attic home where he felt obliged to forego a college education to play nursemaid while his brother Walter (John Hopkins) went off to pursue a lucrative career in medicine. Victor is joined by his wife Esther (Faye Castelow) who is eager that he should negotiate a good price from the furniture assessor whose arrival is imminent. Forsaking a career in science, Victor stepped-up and cared for his father who had fallen on hard times having felt the sting of the financial crash and Great Depression. The first twenty minutes consist of the couple leaching salient background information about their circumstances into the situation. They intersperse the mundanities of dry cleaning with the importance of maximising value from the sale of the furniture which would enable Victor to transition from the public servant job he resents and endures, to the freedom of a comfortable retirement from the force.

We learn that the district is being levelled and so there is some urgency to clear the attic of its treasures before the building is demolished. When he eventually arrives, Goodman’s Solomon is a puffing and panting ball of wily observation and quickly delves into the fray. By turns ingratiating and offended, we’re left in no doubt that we are in the presence of an astute and manipulative Jewish negotiator of the old school. Solomon’s technique is to do everything to avoid naming the price he is prepared to pay, instead using the time to extract information and develop rapport and connection with the seemingly hapless Victor, who over his years as a policeman has developed an ability to read people and their intentions and so is eager to conclude matters.

When brother Walter surprisingly appears having not returned calls, there is a real chance to clear long-held resentments and animosity, but despite the interventions of both Esther and Solomon, Victor clings to his entrenched negative views of his brother, despite a number of revelations which clarify events of the past two decades.

From sedate beginnings, Miller builds the simmering familial scene to an emotional crescendo which is frequently and humorously broken by the re-emergence from the bedroom, of the elderly and meddling Solomon who has his eyes on the prize and won’t be deterred. It is during the intervening stifled exchanges, as characters strain to resist the desire to pour-out their accumulated anger, that impassioned and furious eruptions burst through. These add emotional heft and weight to proceedings, revealing a heart-rending loss of sibling closeness to years of bitterness and acrimonious antipathy, based on half-truths and suppressed information. We yearn for the brothers’ reconciliation but ultimately are forced to accept that decades spent investing in layered resentment towards another, is hard to let go of.

THE PRICE continues at Marylebone Theatre until 7th June and runs 2 hours and 30 mins including interval.

The Price Tickets