November 7, 2003
A Noise Within's production
gets to the tragic heart of Arthur Miller's 'The Price.'
by Rob Kendt
Even when they're not around, Arthur Miller's flawed fathers make
their sons' lives hell. In "The Price," he's nothing but an empty
chair in an abandoned walk-up apartment, to which his middle-age heirs have
come to sell off the furniture just ahead of the wrecking ball.
But their long-dead patriarch, once crushed by the Great
Depression and by his own greater depression, might as well be sitting in his
former throne: His sons Victor (Geoff Elliott) and Walter (Robertson Dean), and
Victor's embittered wife Esther (Deborah Strang) step around it gingerly,
gesture in its direction, argue with it but never sit in it, as if the old man
were still there, emanating the silent reproach of failure.
Failure may hang over this, Miller's most Chekhovian tragedy, like
so many dust covers, but A Noise Within's new production is a resounding
success--a wrenching, riveting real-time accounting of regrets and roads not
taken that accumulates force with the inevitable, lulling flow of music.
It's not a stirring symphonic suite but a sere, heart-rending
chamber piece, intimate and painful as therapy. As with all of Miller's works,
there are some exposed gears in the moral engineering; no play of his can get
by without a few jabs at class, power and money.
But in the hands of co-directors Elliott and Julia Rodriguez
Elliott and the three leads, "The Price" has real tragic stature. As
Victor, a beat cop who stuck selflessly by Dad through his leanest years, the
passive-aggressive Elliott dominates the play with his deliberate gait and wary
honesty. His spine bent and stiffened by resentment, he carries himself with
grave significance, even if he's not sure anymore what it signifies.
As his disappointed spouse Esther, Strang hits a difficult note
between nag and conscience--the unappetizing domain of many of Miller's women--and
nails it with blinding confidence. There are few actresses around who could
make such sense of Esther without holding back an inch of her unseemly candor
and nettlesome anger. The reward, as Strang's marvelously constructed
performance reaches its denouement, is a cracked, touching vulnerability.
Dean has an even tougher job as Walter, the brother who ran as far
as he could from his bankrupt home into a lucrative life as a surgeon. A late
arrival to the furniture fire sale, Dean has only one act to make Walter's case
and try to make amends. Dean manages to etch a moving portrait of a bruised
soul emerging from a shell of privilege and denial, an effective counterweight
to Victor's unbudging lumpen pride--and he and Elliott play off each other with
well-shaded, unbridled immediacy.
Providing a subtle counterweight to their father's poisoning
defeatism is Gregory Solomon, the ancient, sprightly dealer brought in to
appraise the furniture. He's a diverting strain of klezmer in this chamber
drama and, as played with unfussy, in-character relish by Len Lesser, he
attains as much gravity by play's end as the central family drama.
Matching Miller's earnestness with its own passionate, in-the-moment
emotional authenticity, this "Price" is right.
*
'The Price'
Where: A Noise Within, 234 S. Brand Blvd., Glendale
When: Wednesday-next Thursday and Nov. 21, 29, Dec. 4, 8 p.m.;
Sunday and Nov. 30, 2 and 7 p.m.; Nov. 22, 2 and 8 p.m.
Ends: Dec. 4
Price: $20-$40
Contact: (818) 240-0910
Running time: 2 hours, 25 minutes