Miller's 'Price' returns to Walnut 40 years later

At first glance, the Walnut Street Theatre's production of Arthur Miller's

The Price

seems a perfect fit. The play opened there exactly 40 years ago, in January 1968, before a successful Broadway run. In addition, the cast features film, TV and stage actor Robert Prosky, a Temple grad and "[Mana]Yunker" by birth, appearing onstage with his sons John and Andy in the kind of taut family drama for which Miller created the template.

The elder Prosky plays Gregory Solomon, a sharp-eyed 89-year-old antiques dealer summoned by Victor Franz (Andy Prosky) to an attic bursting with the remnants of the Franz family's riches-to-rags history.

Victor is a weary cop, past pension age but frozen by inaction, which leaves his wife, Esther (Leisa Mather), seething with resentment at his unwillingness to retire. Looming over the proceedings is the absence of brother Walter (John Prosky), a successful surgeon, who went to medical school and left Victor behind to care for their ailing father, abandoning his dreams of a career in science. The brothers haven't spoken for 16 years, and won't speak again until Walter's tardy arrival the moment before the lights are extinguished on Act 1.

While the buildup of dramatic tension should, by this point, be at its peak, somehow director Michael Carleton allows too much slack, and Walter's arrival is a relief, less for the insights he brings with him than for the hope that the second act will offer some variation from the first.

Though Robert Prosky is a commanding and comic presence, Andy Prosky's Victor is never rooted deeply enough for us to want to care about his problems, while Mather uses an inscrutable accent - picked up on I-95 somewhere between Manhattan and Maine - so distracting that her contributions are inevitably minimized.

John Prosky fares better; indeed, his tightly wound performance and the resulting fraternal tension makes for exciting theater. But again, Carleton creeps slowly to a climax and, once there, stays put, allowing the gathered steam to seep out rather than explode.

Colleen Grady's costumes are unexceptional, particularly in the case of a much-discussed suit sported by Esther. However, Robert Kramer's set is a literal vision of the family's crammed attic, with the added drama of a zigzagging ceiling line and disintegrating skylight that, following the script's themes of forced revelations, allows in more light than perhaps Victor would prefer.

It's just a shame the whole production, with all its promising elements and local ties, is never quite able to illuminate the stage in the same manner.

Written by Arthur Miller, directed by Michael Carleton, scenery by Robert Kramer, costumes by Colleen Grady, lighting by Shelley Hicklin.

Cast:

Andy Prosky (Victor Franz), Leisa Mather (Esther Franz), Robert Prosky (Gregory Solomon), John Prosky (Walter Franz).

Playing at:

Walnut Street Theatre, 825 Walnut St. Through March 2. Tickets: $10-$57.50. Information: 215-574-3550 or

» READ MORE: www.walnutstreettheatre.org

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