“The Price” Deserves Bigger Audience

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32164, 6 December 1969, Page 14

“The Price” Deserves Bigger Audience

“The Price.” By Arthur Miller. Produced by Antony Groser. Downstage Theatre. Repertory Theatre. Running time: 8 p.m. to 10.25 p.m.

Downstage has come to Christchurch with a wonderful tour de force which materialises all the attractive rumours which have so far reached us. Judging from the first-night house, Christchurch seems to accept the legend of Downstage with unjustified scepticism: this production deserves a much larger audience.

Two brothers stand round discussing their dead father: his business failure, their allegiance to him, and the disposal of his furniture. The whole thing takes place continuously in an attic, and the sons are attended by only a wife and a furniture dealer.

One gets the impression that one has been through all this several times already with Miller, but nevertheless it is impossible to explain “The Price” as simply a rewrite or a composite work. The developed relationships among the characters are certainly new, and the concluding tone of resignation seems the product of maturing thought. Reduced to such lame sum-

mary, the whole thing sounds rather boring. But through the expertise of the writer, and even more the presentation skill of Downstage, the play never once succumbs to the monotony which is inherent in the material. Rather, it accepts the illusions and pretences on which three of the characters function and offers a delicately structured study of psychological combat The most remarkable feature of Miller’s latest work is the person of the Jewish merchant who has been picked up out of Vichy and deposited in the feeble furore of capitalist negotiation. Not only does the Jew present a substitute father-figure who interprets everything in terms of used furniture (“Everything today must be disposable"), but he is also a semi-detached spokesman for Miller (also a Jew, at least by birth); he takes the audience’s sympathy on his first entry, and he gets the very significant last laugh. Frederick Betts’s performance of Solomon the Jew was hard to fault: his movement was excellent, his gesture

springhtly in a rather laboured way. Ray Henwood was also impressive as Walter, although at times he seemed to hide behind his inscrutably enigmatic lines. Matthew O’Sullivan’s initial solo appearance gave the attic its atmosphere of nostalgic reminiscence; his voice was beautiful, but his accent fluctuated a little at the start His relationship with his wife, played by Christine Batstone, was well conceived, and they managed their poorly-motivated arguments precisely enough to make Esther's “I don’t see what you’re so excited about” perfectly in key. If this venture is successful, we are told, we may get “The Au Pair Man" early next year. If it is unsuccessful, we must conclude that Christchurch does not want a good variety of high quality theatre. —H.D. McN.