Review: The Price, Marylebone Theatre

Whisper it, but this might be Arthur Miller’s greatest play. 

The action is centred around Victor Franz, a New York cop, who returns to his once-wealthy parents’ home to sell off their possessions which have lain untouched since the devastating Wall Street Crash. In the cluttered attic he meets Solomon, a 90-year-old Jewish furniture dealer, who chatters through anecdotes at pace as the two undertake some delicate negation over the price for the accumulated items. But Miller has a trick up his sleeve, and introduces a huge tonal shift at the interval. The second half of the play sidelines Solomon and forces Victor, in the company of his wife Esther, into a long-overdue reckoning with his estranged, hotshot surgeon brother, Walter.

That confrontation is rooted in a shared past. During their father’s financial collapse, Walter pursued his ambition, becoming a successful surgeon, while Victor sacrificed his own prospects to support the family, joining the police and remaining there ever since. It’s this divergence – self-fulfilment versus self-sacrifice – that quietly fuels the play’s central tension, and which Miller refuses to resolve neatly.

Under Jonathan Munby‘s direction, these two distinct halves are carefully balanced. The first is buoyed by humour and rhythm: Solomon’s digressions feel purposeful in their theatricality. Henry Goodman is mesmerizingly frenetic, imbuing the character with both mischief and pathos. His performance finds comedy in physical detail – even down to the precise business of eating a boiled egg – while never losing sight of the character’s lived experience. His delivery of Miller’s serio-comic dialogue is razor-sharp, landing lines like ‘If they would build old hotels I could sell this, but they only build new hotels’ with effortless wit. 

Elliot Cowan‘s Victor begins as a man worn down by resignation, his frustration simmering as Solomon delays naming a price. In the second half, that frustration hardens into something more volatile. Opposite him, John Hopkins’ Walter is slick and articulate, but undercut by an air of guilt and unease. Peace offerings of reconciliation feel as much like attempts at self-absolution as generosity. Faye Castelow brings a quiet, persistent exasperation to Esther, grounding the emotional stakes of what is a tricky bit-part role. 

By the time the long-anticipated confrontation arrives, the acting is undeniably compelling. Yet the delayed eruption slightly blunts its force. The play takes its time getting there, and not all of that time feels equally charged. That said, Miller’s intention seems less about delivering a decisive climax than sustaining a moral impasse. The play resists easy judgment: neither brother emerges wholly vindicated, and the ending lingers in ambiguity, asking whether Victor’s sacrifice was noble or misguided, and whether Walter’s success came at too high a cost.

Jon Bausor’s attic set is richly evocative, with its dense clutter reinforcing the play’s central metaphor: that the “price” is not just financial, but emotional and existential. Anna Watson’s lighting shifts subtly from the eerie stillness of a preserved past to the harsher exposure of present confrontation under moonlight. 

The runtime is both a blessing and a curse. It allows us to inhabit fully the brothers’ grievances, but stretches concentration by the time the emotional payoff arrives. Still, this is no fault of Munby’s assured pacing, nor of the uniformly strong performances.

At its heart, Miller returns to familiar territory – the burden of personal responsibility – but complicates it with a more unsettling idea about inheritance being not just our parents’ furniture, but their legacy too. The Price offers no easy answers, just a finely balanced reckoning.

Written by Arthur Miller
Directed by Jonathan Munby
Set & Costume Design by Jon Bausor
Lighting Design by Anna Watson
Composer & Sound Design by Max Pappenheim

The Price plays at Marylebone Theatre until Sunday 7 June.