Last Updated on April 24, 2026
4.0 out of 5.0 starsArthur Miller’s gripping family drama at Marylebone Theatre
Anyone who has ever faced the prospect of selling off the household goods of their deceased parents will understand precisely what Arthur Miller had to say in The Price. The master of writing plays about the uniquely painful wounds that family members inflict on each other, Miller wrote The Price based partly on his own experiences, yet this play tells some universal truths.
Directed by Jonathan Munby, the play takes place in the New York loft apartment once inhabited by the deceased parents of two estranged brothers, Victor and Walter Franz. Victor (Elliot Cowan) is a policeman, nearing 50, and grappling with what to do with himself as he nears retirement. His brother, Walter (John Hopkins), is a successful surgeon.
They have not spoken since their father’s death 16 years prior. The house is due for demolition, which has galvanised Victor to call in a furniture salesman. He has attempted to contact Walter to join in with the sale of their parent’s effects, but has had no response. Thus, Victor and his long-suffering wife, Esther (Faye Castelow), face the task of selling up the belongings alone.
The family was once wealthy, but the father lost his business and went bankrupt during the financial crash of the 1930s. His wife died around this time – it is suggested that their fall from wealth killed her. Walter continues with his studies, sending a monthly pittance to his father, while Victor sacrifices his opportunity to study and build his own successful career in science.
He takes a job as a policeman to keep his father afloat and to prevent him from joining the legions of unemployed men camped on the grass verges of the city ‘like an outdoor flophouse’. Being a man of integrity, Victor has risen very slowly in the police force and he and Esther have lived financially straitened lives. Esther’s generation of women were restricted in opportunities to make money with a career of their own and she has lived with the frustration of having a husband who is neither motivated by money nor confident enough to make changes to develop himself.
Into this dynamic walks furniture salesman Gregory Solomon, who understands all there is to know about family dynamics once parents have died. It is painful to accept that while each piece of furniture carries emotional value, it rarely holds any financial value. As Solomon observes, ‘‘The average family they love each other like crazy, but the minute the parents die is all of a sudden a question of who is going to get what and you’re covered with cats and dogs.’
In Solomon, Miller has written a superb role for a comedic actor, and Goodman is as if born to the role. He nails the Russian Jewish emigrè accent and mannerisms perfectly and is full of observations, life lessons, stories, and not-so-subtle wheeling and dealing. Yet, at the age of 89, he is a man who is waiting for a death that has not yet arrived.
He cannot believe his good fortune in being offered one more spin of the dice in a job he loves and from which he has retired. Will he outlive the sale of all the furniture he is buying or will the furniture outlive him? He has the measure of Victor, who is unable to negotiate a better deal than Solomon offers. The money is changing hands when Miller dramatically introduces the unexpected arrival of Walter.
At this point the play shifts from comedy to something darker and emotionally challenging. The two brothers circle one another, repressed resentments bubbling up and crashing like waves over the two men. Victor, who in the first act is filled with good manners and repressed emotion, explodes with a lifetime of rage and confusion as Walter exposes truths about his relationship with their deceased father who, it turns out, manipulated Victor.
Walter offers Victor a job and a way to make money, but Victor is not easily seduced by the offer of financial stability and realises that what Walter really wants is forgiveness for the choices he made to walk away from the family and continue on his trajectory as a doctor. Victor refuses to forgive or to accept Walter’s interpretation of their father’s behaviour towards him.
The Price is on the surface about the price of the family furniture, but it is about the price that is exacted for the decisions we make – every choice has a consequence. It examines the price of success – Walter has suffered a breakdown – and the price of integrity and living an illusion. What is the value that anyone can assign to the lives they have lived? A capitalist society tells us it is related to the accumulation of money, but Miller clearly critiques the corrosive effects of an obsession with money and suggests that integrity, loyalty and a considered life may have more value.
The ensemble cast was all strong with two standout performances in Cowan who was spellbinding in the second half, and Goodman who commanded the stage in the first act. Although his part is much smaller in the second act, he literally has the last laugh and does so brilliantly.
The set design (Jon Bausor) captures the claustrophobic nature of family relationships and the chair in which the father used to sit movingly becomes the embodiment of the deceased man. In the first act, Solomon, himself a father figure in the play, occupies this chair. In the second act the chair is empty and both sons relate to it as if the man were still sitting in it, at one point Victor punching down on it before collapsing onto it in despair as he realises how he has been manipulated.
But even then, he cannot face the truth of the past and Miller writes ‘we invent ourselves and wipe out what we know’. Miller is commenting not only about individuals but society, in particular, relating to schisms in America relating to the Vietnam War.
Miller plays skillfully with our emotions. There are no villains in this piece. Both brothers are written with even-handedness and empathy. The audience sides with one and then the other. In the end, everyone is hurting. Miller writes that the brothers ‘are like two halves of the same guy’. But these halves cannot be integrated or reconciled and there is no easy resolution, even though we might hope for one.
The lack of happy ending is true to life when it comes to family relationships, when events that have unfolded in the past cannot easily be put to rights. The power of Miller’s play is that while in the first half of The Price the audience is laughing in recognition of what family life is like, by the end of the second act, Miller has grabbed us, shaken us about and left us facing some truths about our own families.
The Price runs at Marylebone Theatre from 17 April to 7 June 2026
Marylebone Theatre, Rudolf Steiner House, 35 Park Road, London NW1 6XT
Check out our South Bank and Bankside Theatre Previews 2026 (January–July)
Leave a Reply