The musty, dusty attic makes one’s fingers simply itch to touch things, to peek into dresser drawers, to handle 78-rpm records, to pluck a string from an old harp that stands partially covered, probably out of tune, to put a record on an old Victrola and hear the phony Irish accents of Mr. Gallagher and Mr. Shean. It doesn’t look like a battlefield, but wait a minute. We’re about to see Arthur Miller’s “The Price,” and when Miller writes, rage is imminent and blood will be shed.
A strong production of Miller’s play opened last night at the Crestwood Court space of Avalon Theatre Company, to run through Feb. 13
When the house lights go down and the drama begins, John Contini enters, uses a flashlight to find a light switch. He’s wearing a jacket with a shoulder patch that identifies him as a member of the Port Authority of New York police, the guys who patrol airports and bus stations, kind of a precursor of the TSA.
He pokes around, smiles at an old fencing foil, listens to a couple of records. He’s Victor Franz, in his boyhood home, to meet with his wife, his brother and an appraiser-buyer. The building is about to be torn down and Victor wants to sell the contents of the room, the shards of his life. The title refers to the imminent sale and to Miller’s larger subject, what a man pays to keep his self-respect, to maintain his image, to be honest in a dishonest world. That question, posed by the playwright in 1968, remains valid and important today.
When his wife, Esther (a first-rate Peggy Billo, successful in a difficult role made even harder by the male-dominated writing standards of the time) arrives, we meet a couple that is on edge. Victor and his brother Walter, a successful surgeon, have been estranged for many years. Victor has called and left messages, but he has no idea whether his older brother will show up, and he’s very nervous. Esther, very interested in money as Victor nears retirement, wants him to sell at a good price and to keep all the money, though to an untrained eye, they are sitting on what appears to be more a trash dump than a gold mine.
Next up is Gregory Solomon (Bob Harvey, in an outstanding performance), speaking in a Lower East Side-Eastern Europe-Jewish accent, dropping tidbits of business lore and philosophy, stealing scenes like Bernie Madoff stole money. He’s a treat.
Last but not least is Walter (Peter Mayer, so good I kept expecting him to spout the surgeon’s motto, “You’ll never heal without stainless steel”). As the two men dominate the second act, sparring politely, picking off punches, then advancing to blood-letting, sucker-punching and hitting below the belt, we get to the core of Miller’s polemic.
There is considerable divergence when Victor and Walter defend their actions in relation to their dealings with their father. I took Victor’s side, believing little of Walter’s references to his discourse about his emotional problems and how he really had meant to reach out to his younger brother, how he regretted that Victor had sacrificed his own dreams to take care of their poverty-stricken father, deep in the throes of the Great Depression. I’m sure others who see the drama will disagree, but that’s okay. We’re each entitled to our opinions
But Miller leaves us with other questions: If Victor and Esther are in such financial straits, why are they talking optimistically about retiring and traveling on his pension? Why haven’t they sold this detritus earlier? How much income would their father have received from an investment of his $4000? With as many daily newspapers as New York had in those days, how could Jerry Berger-precursors like Walter Winchell or Leonard Lyons not have written about the breakdown of the famous surgeon? And what made it so impossible for Victor to have worked to support his father and still have gone to college?
The acting is outstanding, and director Bobby Miller has them working together like the well-known well-oiled machine. Larry Mabrey’s set design and Erin Kelley’s props gathering and design were most impressive.
The Price, a production of the Avalon Theatre Company, is at Crestwood Court through Feb. 13
—Joe