About This Show
n the attic of a Manhattan brownstone, filled with sheet-draped furniture, piles of books, rolled up carpets, and an old Victrola, the lives of four people converge one late afternoon in November, 1967, and none of them is unchanged by the encounter. Victor and Esther Franz are waiting for an antiques dealer, Gregory Soloman, and Victor’s long estranged brother, Walter. The meeting of two brothers – one a successful surgeon, the other a police sergeant – takes place after many years of estrangement and is necessitated by the task of disposing of their parents’ property. A wary civility soon gives way to accusations and counter-charges. Before these brothers part, festering bitterness, resentments and jealousies will boil over. The Price is ostensibly about the amount of money an antique dealer is willing to pay for the roomful of items. Yet it is viscerally about the cost of doing business as a brother, a son, a spouse, and as a human being. Arthur Miller is a master at telling stories rooted in family dynamics. The Price explores sibling rivalry, confrontation with the past and with their memories, the effects of the Great Depression, the pursuit of a dream, and the responsibility one must assume for one’s own life.
