April 29, 2010
\nAdelaide Theatre<\/p>\n
The Price
\nBy Arthur Miller
\nState Theatre Company of South Australia
\nDunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre
\nApril 28. Tickets\u00a0 $ 29 – 59. Bookings : BASS 131 246
\nUntil May 16.<\/p>\n
Murray Bramwell<\/p>\n
In an interview, for BBC television in 1987, Arthur Miller said that his plays were about the birds coming home to roost. They might think they are flying around free, he explained, but, sooner or later, one by one they would land back where they started. This, mordantly summarized, is Miller\u2019s sense of his characters\u2019 tragic destiny. It is ultimately a pessimistic view, but it is also the framework in which lives are lived and personal principles are upheld – or reneged upon.<\/p>\n
This certainly applies to The Price<\/em>, his excellent, but relatively unknown play from 1968, about two brothers, Victor and Walter Franz, who become estranged while still in their late teens. Their father, a New York tycoon, has lost his fortune in the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and, broken by the experience, he persuades one son to abandon his own ambitions in order to support him through his old age, while the other repudiates him and follows a lucrative career as a surgeon.<\/p>\n Sixteen years after the father\u2019s death, the brothers meet again in the family house where an attic full of dusty furniture is being appraised by the well-named Gregory Solomon, an elderly Jewish dealer whose wisdom is equalled by his worldliness. I pick up the pieces, he comments drily, and Miller\u2019s play powerfully explores the recriminations and regrets of the contrasting characters. It is impossible to know what is important, says Victor, looking back over his life choices, as his wife Esther now yearns for more money and his brother Walter describes the liberation of temporarily losing his.<\/p>\n In this accomplished production for State Theatre, Adam Cook has found a timely play with a strong theme and an engrossing second act. Amidst the artful clutter of \u00a0Ailsa Paterson\u2019s design, with its piles of bric-a-brac and jagged floor boards -suggesting that the edge of the attic is also the edge of the world – the actors strut and fret their two hours with memorable precision.<\/p>\n Navigating Miller\u2019s salty Lower East Side dialect, Michael Habib and Carmel Johnson vividly capture Victor and Esther\u2019s struggle between personal dignity and fiscal practicality. Pip Miller is a well-judged foil as the insouciant \u2013 and chastened \u2013 Walter, and Dennis Olsen\u2019s sprightly Solomon has a comic warmth to match the existential pragmatism.<\/p>\n Cook has staged a finely balanced rendering of Arthur Miller\u2019s finely balanced and prescient argument. There are no glib or sentimental conclusions here, and plenty of current parallels to the GFC. The Price<\/em> is a story well worth the telling.<\/p>\n \u201cBirds home to roost in a story worth telling\u201d The Australian, April 30, 2010. p.15<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" April 29, 2010 Adelaide Theatre The Price By Arthur Miller State Theatre Company of South Australia Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre April 28. Tickets\u00a0 $ 29 – 59. Bookings : BASS 131 246 Until May 16. Murray Bramwell In an interview, for BBC television in 1987, Arthur Miller said that his plays were about the birds coming home to roost. They might think they are flying around free, he explained, but, sooner or later, one by one they would land […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-7","category-archive"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1125"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1125\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1689,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1125\/revisions\/1689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}