Theatre in Review: The Price (Roundabout Theatre Company)

	Tony Shalhoub, Mark Ruffalo, Jessica Hecht. Photo: Joan Marcus

There's a clearance sale going on at the American Airlines Theatre these days; the goods include an enormous job lot of vintage furniture plus an extensive consignment of shattered dreams and burning resentments. Once again we are visiting the attic setting of Arthur Miller's The Price, as the remains of a family's once-prosperous existence are to be sold off and two brothers find themselves locked in psychological warfare. This is no mere fraternal squabble; the issues at hand are questions of responsibility that have determined the courses of their adult lives -- and neither man will emerge unscathed.

The terms of battle are set by Derek McLane's set, which renders the attic as a floor covered with chairs, sofas, and chiffoniers; there are no walls, but overhead is another floor, turned upside-down, with a similar collection of furniture pieces pointing downward. It's a remarkably effective image of the weight of the past pressing down on the present -- a concept that provides the play with its dramatic foundation. The furniture is very much in the old-world style that spelled money in the early twentieth century -- rich woods, elegantly carved, designed to last a lifetime. In the event, the sense of permanence these pieces once offered proved illusory. For many years, this attic was occupied by members of the once-prosperous Franz family, whose considerable resources vanished in the stock market crash that triggered the Great Depression. "Took five weeks. Less," says Victor, one of the surviving Franzes.

That Victor, now a beat cop, was raised to live a very different life is signaled as he looks at the foil he once used for fencing classes; to prove the point, his fencing gloves, brought home from Europe by his mother, are produced. Victor was supposed to attend an Ivy League school and make a career as a scientist, but the money vanished when he was 13, and his father, stunned by the evanescence of his fortune, disappeared mentally, never to return. This once-dynamic businessman spent his remaining years sitting in a chair, listening to the radio news. "Now and then he was making change at the Automat. Toward the end he was delivering telegrams," Victor recalls. For someone who once had his own chauffeur, such a precipitous fall was impossible to assimilate.

Victor's father died in 1954; fifteen years later, the building where the family's goods are stored is to be torn down, and Victor has arranged for an appraiser to take the entire lot off his hands. He is Gregory Solomon, played by Danny DeVito, who takes the first act and neatly places it in his vest pocket. A diminutive ball of energy that belies his claim to being nearly 90, Solomon putters about the stage, looking like Snow White's eighth dwarf, wielding a force field of small talk while quietly noting the crack in the soundboard of a harp and calculating that a Spanish Jacobean dinner table is too wide for the doorways of modern apartments. We hear him before we see him, offering a symphony of groans and wheezes as he climbs the attic stairs. He reminisces about his three wives. He mourns the daughter who killed herself. He reaches into his valise, pulls out a hard-boiled egg, and cracks it open with his cane. Eyeing Victor's wife, Esther -- who is not going to settle for anything less than the best price -- he smiles broadly and says, "I like her. She's suspicious." As written, Solomon is a scene-stealing role, and DeVito's performance amounts to a kind of theatrical grand theft.

Still, Solomon's admittedly delightful talking jags don't detract from the feeling that something is wrong. You can sense it in the air of exhaustion that hangs over Mark Ruffalo's Victor and the restlessness eating away at Jessica Hecht's Esther. With their son at college, this once happily married couple, now facing 50, is at a crossroads. Although eligible for retirement, he can't bring himself to fill out the papers; she stays at home, nursing her enervation and feelings of envy for those who are better off. Hecht really nails the dissatisfaction roiling Esther, who sees the furniture sales as an almost magical ticket to an unspecified future of happiness and comfort. When Victor suggests she take a part-time job, just to get out of the house, she responds, "I can't go to the same place day after day. I never could and I never will," with a sudden savagery that allows us to take the precise measure of her unhappiness. The atmosphere only thickens with the unexpected appearance of Walter, Victor's estranged brother, a surgeon. The brothers have long been separated by their choices: Victor put his life on hold to support his parents; Walter basically walked away to build a glittering career in medicine.

It's not that simple, of course. Walter has left behind quite a trail of sorrow: divorce, a nervous breakdown, children who "with all the unsolved mysteries in the world they're investigating the guitar." Now, he says, he has found peace and he wants to make it up to Victor. He fields a scheme to "donate" the furniture, take a large tax deduction, and pass it along to Victor and Esther; he also dangles a job offer for Victor at the new wing of the hospital where he is chairman of the board, presenting his brother with a long-delayed opportunity to work in science. Tony Shalhoub plays Walter, and there's something eerily slick and salesman-like in the way he presents his tale of woe, pacing the room, gesturing grandly, and giving each line reading an extra throb of emotion -- and there's no moment more riveting in Terry Kinney's production than the long pause, accompanied by a coolly appraising look from Victor, who quietly says, "I'm not sure I know what you want, Walter."

From this point on, the tension mounts steadily, as long-held truths are subjected to clinical examination, old wounds are freshly cauterized, and both men are forced to assess the costs of their decisions. Walter's generosity comes with the implicit suggestion that Victor and Esther have been fools and need rescuing, a notion that Victor all but chokes on. Walter also plausibly, brutally, argues that their father wasn't worth saving, unearthing secrets that weren't really secrets yet had never been openly discussed. Victor, who doesn't need to point out that Walter's life has, in many ways, been a disaster, responds that his actions are less about filial piety than a feeling about a world gone mad, recalling an appalling memory of Bryant Park one night after the stock market crashed: "The grass was covered with men. Like a big, open-air flophouse. And not bums -- some of them still had shined shoes and good hats, busted businessmen, lawyers, skilled mechanics. Which I'd seen a hundred times. But suddenly, you know? -- I saw it. There was no mercy. Anywhere."

The power of The Price lies in how a psychologically cogent conflict about love, family, and duty is folded into a larger debate about how to live one's life -- caring for others or in the exclusive pursuit of money and power, socialism in some form or, in the words of Ayn Rand, the virtue of selfishness. Miller, whose sympathies are never in doubt, nevertheless fights fair, allowing Walter to land some impressive emotional blows before Victor makes his final, anguished closing arguments -- which, in Ruffalo's performance, seem to be wrenched from deep inside his gut.

Kinney has welded his four fine talents into an impressive quartet: In addition to DeVito's gleeful shtick and the increasingly savage counterpunching between Ruffalo and Shalhoub, Hecht impresses as Esther, who first tries to bring Victor and Walter together but finds herself increasingly caught in the crossfire, finally forced to take a side.

McLane's set is treated lovingly by David Weiner's lighting, which picks out key pieces of furniture, adding dimension and depth to the look of each scene as the action moves from late afternoon into early evening. Sarah J. Holden's costumes draw a strong contrast between the brothers; she also dresses Hecht attractively in a chic suit (which Esther has just bought for herself). Tom Watson's very 1960s hair design completes the look. The sound design, by Rob Milburn and Michael Bodeen, provides reinforcement for Jesse Tabish's original music and includes such effects as the muted roar of traffic, music from an old 78 record, and, most crucially, a 1920s-era "laughing record," which reverberates eerily through this dusty space filled with old, recriminatory ghosts.

It's long past time that The Price be recognized as one of Miller's finest plays, one that stands next to his acknowledged masterpieces. In no other work of his are the battle lines so fairly drawn, the conflict so well-armed on both sides. "There's a price people pay," Victor says, noting Walter's many personal losses. The more engrossed we become in the brothers' conflict and the collateral damage caused by their choices, we realize that Miller is asking us, What is your price? What are you willing to pay? -- David Barbour