One family’s bargain with the past |In the first deliberate moments of Arthur Miller’s “The Price,” director Ed Baierlein and Paul Caouette, as Victor, establish the touchstones of what is, essentially, a memory play. Caouette handles the worn antiques that fill the attic of his family’s brownstone with matter-of-fact care, as a wizened detective might examine the evidence from a once important case. He awaits the estate appraiser.
To Esther, his wife, however, Victor is a man who has never lived up to his potential, and we learn in no time that she thinks he should use his upcoming pensioned retirement to go back to school and resurrect the scientific career he deferred to support his ruined father through the Great Depression. Today, in her new dress – a stylish period cut – Erica Sarzin-Borrillo’s Esther is ready to break out.
The marvel of Sarzin-Borrillo’s work is that despite Esther’s strident critiques, we see her intense need to believe in her own life, her marriage being central to this. In the end, unlike Victor and his brother Walter, she finds peace by taking her own advice and adjusting her point of view. She is a heroine who overcomes her flaw and averts a wider tragedy.
Tupper Cullum makes a breezy entrance just before intermission as Walter, a successful physician. His arrival immediately raises the stakes of the drama and lifts the intricate premises that Miller has built for nearly an hour into a dynamic, life-defining second act.
Cullum imbues Walter with such ease and self-assuredness that we effortlessly hang with him as he takes an unexpected U-turn with his life. Owning up to his guilt over his success at Victor’s expense, Walter stakes a claim to the moral high ground by turning the feeble deal to which Victor has agreed with the estate appraiser into an offer of the very life and economic respectability for which Esther has long hungered.
Into this long-simmering imbroglio, Miller injects Gregory Solomon, a crafty and ancient, but not quite retired, appraiser. Enveloped in a comically thick Russian-Yiddish accent and an untamed salt-and-pepper mane, Albert Banker sidles his way into our hearts with a unique blend of schmaltz, chutzpah and Solomonic wisdom, providing a catalyst for the family members’ bargain with their pasts.
When an exasperated Walter jettisons his guilt and leaves in a huff, Victor settles on the price with Solomon. Here, Caouette’s decisive self-confidence reinfuses Victor with the principles upon which he has staked his life. That Esther joins him in this affirmation completes Miller’s sophisticated conceit – the enigmatic contrast between four reaffirmed mythologies and the irredeemable familial schism from which they arise.
Bob Bows also reviews theater for Variety and KUVO/89.3 FM. For a longer version of this review, visit his website, www.ColoradoDrama.com. He can be reached at BBows@ColoradoDrama.com.
“The Price” | *** 1/2 RATING
DRAMA|Germinal Stage Denver, 2540 W. 44th Ave.|Written by Arthur Miller|Directed by Ed Baierlein|Starring Paul Caouette, Erica Sarzin-Borrillo, Albert Banker, Tupper Cullum|THROUGH DEC. 10|
8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays; 7 p.m. Sundays|2 hours, 20 minutes |$15.75-$19.75|303-455-7108
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-John Moore
