A heavy ‘Price’: Two River Theater revives Arthur Miller play about brothers’ epic feud

T. CHARLES ERICKSON

From left, Kevin Isola, Andrea Syglowski and Karl Kenzler co-star in “The Price” at Two River Theater in Red Bank.

The set of “The Price” — Arthur Miller’s 1968 play, which is currently being presented at Two River Theater in Red Bank — is a cluttered living room in a New York brownstone. It can only be reached by climbing a lot of stairs, and when elderly furniture dealer Gregory Solomon arrives, he is exhausted from the exertion.

Offered water, he declines. “Water, I don’t need. A little blood I could use,” he jokes. “Another couple of steps, you’ll be in heaven.”

That is the last time in this play that anyone associates this room with heaven. For the three other characters — brothers Victor and Walter Franz, and Victor’s wife Esther — this room triggers a mountain of unresolved, deeply rooted familial conflicts, and long-simmering resentments. And these characters spend most of the play unearthing them, chewing them over, and struggling to overcome them. This is heavy stuff, which, of course, shouldn’t surprise anyone familiar with more well-known Miller works such as “Death of a Salesman” and “The Crucible.”

It is a good thing that the eccentric Solomon has showed up, as his humorous pontifications provide much of the play’s comic relief.

“The main thing today is shopping,” he says, at one point. “Years ago, a man was unhappy, he didn’t know what to do with himself, he’d go to church, start a revolution. Something. Today you’re unhappy? Can’t figure it out? What is the salvation? Go shopping.”

T. CHARLES ERICKSON

Peter Van Wagner in “The Price.”

Anyway, getting back to the plot … Victor (played by Kevin Isola) and Walter (Karl Kenzler) are here because this was where they grew up, and though their parents died years ago, the cluttered brownstone has just sat there, unoccupied, since then. But the building is going to be demolished, so the brothers have to clear it out — and, hopefully, make some money by selling all the stuff in it. That is where Solomon (Peter Van Wagner) comes in.

The play starts with Victor alone in the room, though he is soon joined by Esther (Andrea Syglowski). Victor (a policeman who will soon be able to retire from the force and start earning his pension) and Walter (a rich doctor) have been estranged for 16 years. Victor and Esther — who have strains in their marriage, of their own — are, initially, not even sure that Walter will show up. Victor has left messages at Walter’s office, but they have not been returned. Walter does get there, though, toward the end of the first act, and the second act is mainly devoted to Victor and Walter — civilly, at first, but more hostilely as they touch on each other’s nerves — getting to the heart of their problems with each other.

“It always seems to me that one little step more and some crazy kind of forgiveness will come and lift up everyone,” says Esther, at one point. But can these three get there?

T. CHARLES ERICKSON

Kevin Isola and the cluttered set of “The Price.”

I loved designer Neil Prince’s set. Miller was quite specific in how it should look, writing that it should evoke “the chaos of ten rooms of furniture squeezed into this one” and that “there is a rich heaviness, something almost Germanic, about the furniture, a weight of time upon the bulging fronts and curving chests marshalled against the walls. The room is monstrously crowded and dense, and it is difficult to decide if the stuff is impressive or merely over-heavy and ugly.” That is just the conundrum that Prince manages to suggest.

But I can’t say I loved the play itself. I have no problem with how the actors handled their roles, or with Brandon J. Dirden’s direction. But I grew weary of the endless arguing. I was reminded of the famous quote about the writer Henry James that has been attributed to several different people: “he chewed more than he bit off” (a play on “he bit off more than he could chew”).

It’s not that the conflict that Miller creates didn’t seem real. But I felt it just wasn’t compelling enough to build such an epic, multi-layered feud around.

Two River Theater in Red Bank will present “The Price” through June 29. Visit tworivertheater.org.

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