Last Friday night as legions of cops patrolled Mifflin Street, one cop strolled onto the stage of The Playhouse at the Overture Center, 201 State St., and turned on a phonograph. The cop was not a member of the Madison Police Department, but New York City's, and was standing in the attic of a Manhattan brownstone cluttered with furniture and assorted knick-knacks in 1963. This was the opening of the Madison Repertory Theatre's season-ending production of Arthur Miller's The Price,\ a production that lived up to the company's usual high standards under the direction of Richard Corley.
The play takes place in real time over two acts, with no scene changes and only one short intermission. The policeman onstage at the beginning of the play is Viktor Franz, who is played aptly and accessibly by Roderick Peeples. He is soon joined onstage by his wife, Esther (Patricia Boyette), and we soon see what is going to be the basis of the play's plot: the dressers, couches, chairs, tables, candelabras, chandeliers, desks, mirrors and harp are going to be sold. Indeed, the action starts out simple enough as they relapse into nostalgia by seeing the items that had been a part of their earlier life when Viktor's father was still alive. The selling of furniture would hardly seem to make an interesting bit of theatre, but we are in the hands of Corley, the patriarch of American drama, and he is not one to disappoint.
The catalyst of the first act is Gregory Solomon. He is played superbly by Rich Baker, who looks like a well-kempt Einstein, and talks like a Russian Jewish Falstaff with a penchant not for ale, but second hand furniture. The first half of the play is a beautiful display of comic timing and character acting as Viktor and Solomon haggle over the price of the furniture.
Solomon is 89 years old, has had three wives and represents the twilight of life in a play that has a lot to do with life's circumstances. Viktor is on the cusp of retiring from the police force after 28 years of service, and Esther would like the money from the sale to be the windfall that restarts their life. Throughout the first half of the play we have a comedy that is tempered with bits of serious reflection. But the play's run as a comedy ends right before the intermission as Viktor's brother, Walter (Richard Henzel) makes his way into the attic, and into his brother's life for the first time in sixteen years.
The second act is a whole different animal as Solomon retires to a backroom, and the two brother's relationship moves to the forefront. Their father—whose stuff they are selling—had been a very successful clothing manufacturer until the stock market crash of 1929. After the crash and the Great Depression, Viktor dropped out of college and gave up hopes of a career in science to join the force and support his father. Walter, on the other hand, continued his schooling and became a successful surgeon, but did not give his father and brother much in the way of financial support. The resentment that is thatched between these two men is so entrenched and tightly woven that it takes an entire act for it to start to unravel. The furniture and its price becomes little more than a premise for two men to look each other in the eye, and come to terms with their longstanding demons and regrets. Miller's script and Corley's handling keep the emotional springs pulled taut, while making sure to send in someone to lighten the mood before anything snaps.
The production that ends the Madison Repertory Theatre's season is also the production that surpasses all the others they have staged this past year. It is the only their third production since the opening of their new playhouse, and not to knock (the very good) ""Our Town"" or (the very mediocre) ""Having Our Say""—the third time was a charm.
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