About the Play:

The Price has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Female/Male Scenes and Male/Male Scenes (particularly suitable for those over 40 years old).

The Price is a full-length drama by Arthur Miller. Two long estranged brothers Victor and Walter – one a weary beat cop, the other a successful surgeon – reunite at the family home after 16 years as they sell off an attic full of furniture, their last link to a family and a world that no longer exist. The Price is a riveting story about family, sacrifice, and the struggle to make peace with the past.

The Price examines with compassion, humour and rare insight, the relationship of two long-estranged brothers who meet after many years to dispose of their late father's belongings. When the Great Depression cost his family their fortune, Victor Franz gave up his dream of an education to support his father. Three decades later, Victor has returned to his childhood home to sell the remainder of his parents’ estate. His wife, his estranged brother, and the wily furniture dealer hired to appraise their possessions all arrive with their own agendas, forcing Victor to confront a question, long-stifled, about the value of his sacrifice. The Price is about family dynamics, and the price of one's decisions. As outlined in Variety: "…the conflict, the basic jealousy and the lifetime of, if not hatred, at least corrosive, though unacknowledged anger, is between two brothers, as well as resentment against a selfish, child-devouring father. The siblings meet, after a sixteen-year estrangement, in the attic of the family residence, where the old furniture is to be disposed of. The first is a policeman who sacrificed his education and probably a career as a scientist to care for his ruined, invalid father. The other, who arrives late, is an eminent surgeon who walked out on the demands of family to concentrate on medicine and personal success. Miller works up to the showdown scene slowly. The policeman and his wife first talk of the past and present to fill in some of the background. Then there is a very long, richly amusing, curiously revealing and enjoyable scene between the officer and a marvelously crotchety, humorous and wise old Jewish dealer who has come to buy the furniture but refuses to set a price without prolonged philosophic conversation. When the surgeon arrives, the brothers take a little time for amenities and feeling each other out before the basis of their long alienation and mutual bitterness emerges into short, blunt, enraged accusations. It is a taut, exciting and superbly theatrical scene, and it reveals the characters, including strengths and weaknesses, of the brothers to each other and themselves – as well as to the audience."

The Price premiered in 1968 on Broadway at the Morosco Theatre. This brilliant, powerful and deeply moving play marked the author's triumphant return to Broadway, ran for more than a year, and was nominated for two Tony Awards, including Best Play. The show enjoyed four Broadway revivals (1979, 1992, 1999, and 2017). The play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and has become a popular choice for community theatre productions.

Cast: 1 female, 3 male

What people say:

"Miller's best play." — The Wall Street Journal

"The Price is one of the most engrossing and entertaining plays that Arthur Miller has ever written. It is superbly, even flamboyantly theatrical…." — The New York Times

"…a challenging, gripping and moving drama." — Variety

"…his finest drama since The Crucible…." — New York Newsday

About the Playwright:

Arthur Miller (1915-2005) was born in New York City and studied at the University of Michigan. With a career that spanned over 50 years, he wrote more than thirty plays that transformed American Theatre and proved to be both the conscience and redemption of the times. His probing dramas received many awards in his lifetime, including two Emmy awards and three Tony Awards for his plays, a Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement, and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1949, for Death of a Salesman.