The Price At Long Wharf Theatre
The Price by Arthur Miller is receiving a puzzling production from Long Wharf Theatre “in partnership with” Legacy Theatre. Thanks to a scintillating performance by Mark Nelson and an intimate setting in Branford’s Stony Creek neighborhood, it is well worth seeing.
Set in 1968, The Price tales place over several hours in a New York brownstone. The senior Franz, once rich and now long dead was wiped out by the Crash of ’29. The family’s once grand furniture now gathers dust on an upper floor to which his son Victor (Alexis Camins) has come to meet used furniture dealer Gregory Solomon (Nelson), hoping to sell the whole lot before the building is torn down in the name of progress.
Victor, a New York cop of 50 and ripe for retirement, is soon joined by his wife Esther (Jennifer Lim), who we soon learn chafes at the economic strictures of their situation. Victor abandoned a promising academic career to look after his father, shattered by his impoverishment, settling for a secure blue-collar job with the NYPD.
His older brother Walter (Carman Lacivita), by contrast, turned his back (or so it seems) on the old man and went on to become a wealthy surgeon. The brothers haven’t spoken in 16 years. Resentment much?
The Price has two distinct parts. The first act is largely concerned with the very entertaining jousting that goes on between the wily Solomon and the obviously overmatched Victor, who hopes to hear “the price,” which Solomon studiously avoids pronouncing.
The role of Solomon, an almost stereotypical Jew who could be straight out of a Borscht Belt routine or Mel Brooks comedy, is probably the funniest role Miller ever wrote. Nelson, a consummate actor whom I fondly remember as the Chocolate Soldier in a Long Wharf production of Arms and the Man many moons ago, seizes the opportunity and turns in a dizzyingly comic performance. It is well worth, as the saying goes, the price of admission.
Then Walter shows up and The Price takes a sharp turn into somewhat tedious family melodrama. Solomon fades into the background and the brothers hash out long-held grievances and misunderstandings at some length.
In the process, Miller dwells on many of his perennial concerns – father-son relationships and what is owed one to the other; the struggle to achieve what passes for the American dream and the price it extorts; the curse of money in a purely transactional society. There are more than a few echoes of the Loman family here.
The bright spot of Solomon aside, The Price is second-tier Miller.
The puzzling aspect of this production is the decision by Artistic Director Jacob Padron that the Franz family be portrayed by Asian-American actors. Much is made of this in the program by director Ralph B. Peña, who enthusiastically took up the challenge, expecting new insights to emerge.
“Casting an Asian American family brings something new to the play,” he writes. “Duty to parents, family obligations, money and personal success can carry a particular weight in Asian American families.”
Funny, but those same concerns loomed large in my very Irish family and I suspect in most families. I’m guessing that just about everyone in the audience saw at least something in the situation that resonated with their own family history.
Since the plot of The Price bears some striking resemblances to Miller’s own family (his well-to-do father was also devastated by the Crash), it’s tempting to think that Miller wrote with a New York Jewish family in mind.
For Miller, however, the ethnicity of the actors in his plays was a minor concern, if it was a concern at all. The production history of The Price shows that a wide variety of actors played these parts.
For me then the casting choice was pretty much a nothing burger. So why bother? In this age of color-blind casting we might have ended up with this cast quite naturally.
Of more concern to me was that Peña and his cast failed to meet the not inconsiderable challenge of preventing the second act of The Price from becoming tedious and even soap-opera hokey at times. I’m willing to admit that could be Miller’s fault as much as theirs.
The Legacy Theatre is a charming space, seating just 130 or so (extended by a few dozen seats for this production). The stage is tiny, so set designer Riw Rakkulchon had a challenge to suggest the overwhelming clutter of the Franz household, a challenge he met.
The Price continues at the Legacy Theatre through November 22, 2026. For more information and to purchase tickets visit the Long Wharf Theatre website.
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