The Price

The first sounds we hear from Victor Franz (Kevin Isola) are not lines but desperate laughter. Victor moves nostalgically around the stage in his old fencing attire, his body reminiscent of a dancer trying to relearn the steps as he goes. He walks back through time, to the thirties to his youth, and to the Depression. As we watched Victor and his brother assess the price of their father’s belongings, we are posed with the question of whether we create an illusion to sustain our lives.This production at the Two River Theater in Red Bank, New Jersey is the endeavor of director and actor Brandon J. Dirden as well as artistic director Justin Waldman. In addition to Isola, it stars Karl Kenzler as Walter Franz, Andrea Syglowski as Esther Franz, and Peter Van Wagner as eighty-nine-year-old Gregory Solomon.The issue at the heart of their meeting is the moral price each has paid for their decisions. Victor Franz is a retirement-aged police officer. His brother Walter is an accomplished physician and scientist. The two brothers reunite, alongside Victor’s dissatisfied wife Esther and a charismatic appraiser, Solomon. Their father, a once rich man who lost nearly everything after the stock market crash of 1929, has left behind their family heirlooms as well as a deeply painful rift between the two brothers. They have returned to the attic of their old New York apartment to assess the price of their father’s belongings.The “indestructible” heirlooms, as Solomon describes them, are the catalyst to the Franz brother’s inevitable rehashing of their falling out. The furniture in The Price represents more than a few old things of which two brothers are trying to get rid. Before Victor ever makes his way before the audience, we are greeted by grand pieces of furniture. Each item, in its imposing nature, represents the overbearing presence of their family history and the choices of those who came before them. Their father is gone, but the Franz brothers are still reminded of him at every turn: his chair onstage; his victrola playing the laughing record throughout the attic.Dirden’s set was able to take audiences beyond the room to which the characters are confined and open it up into the outside world. In a post-production interview with Dirden he explained to me that he did not want the play to become about the furniture, despite its crucial role. “That’s the trap of this thing.” he said. The set, which is the work of scenic designer Neil Prince, featured memorable pieces, among them a small armoire, a Jacobean table with overturned chairs, an oriental rug with fringes, marble statues, candelabras, and a gilded harp. However, it was crucial to Dirden and Prince to find the balance between creating a beautiful space that did not overwhelm the audience and upstage the actors. The director explained “One thing that was important to me was not just the physical space but also honoring the playwright. Arthur Miller is talking about more than this room and these boys. He’s talking about society at large. So, it was important for me to bring in the outside world. They’re coming in from New York City. That’s when we started thinking about the buildings. Not only that, but the changing world. This building is going to be torn down. Why? Because skyscrapers are going up. In the late 60s and early 70s, they were going through some huge changes in these neighborhoods.” Dirden went on to say, as Solomon expresses to Victor onstage, that the world was now in favor of the disposable. He wanted that to be present in the world behind the actors. “Once you have those different levels in the background, with the help of lighting, I can focus on the actual people and the story more downstage. The stage at Two River, which is a semi-thrust, fared better without the mountains of furniture. The space is better utilized with Dirden and Prince choosing to extend the stage using the window and towering buildings showcasing the “other life” (Dirden) in the background. This allowed the director to express that these characters were “up against the world” (Dirden).Lighting designer Driscoll Otto and assistant lighting designer Lauren Nychelle transitioned the set from early dusk into the night. The cast is illuminated by the warm lighting on the walls of the attic as the city created around them grows darker with each passing minute. As the story progresses and the lighting becomes brighter downstage, the audience is pulled to the center of the Franz brothers’ issues. “Time you know is very weak,” Solomon says in the first act. Through these characters, Miller poses several questions about how time affects our memory. Victor remembers his family as loving, worthy of being preserved even after his father claims bankruptcy and his brother leaves them behind. He cites this as his reason for staying and giving up his dreams. Walter recalls the opposite, arguing that there was nothing to preserve and no reason to stay. “When he needed her, she vomited. When you needed him, he laughed.” Walter says of his parents to a seemingly disillusioned Victor. The shifting of the lighting from the outside world to the center of the attic reflects the movement of the conflict from the external to internal. The Depression is where this issue begins, but the disagreement at the center festers in the distorted minds and shifting attitudes of these two siblings.The Price speaks to 2025 audiences at a tumultuous and divided moment. There was a collective, ironic laugh among the audience at Two River Theater when Solomon says in act 2 “I don’t have to tell you, the Federal Government is not reliable.” A family severed by a broken economic system, collective denial, and poor mental health are all themes that could fit snugly into a play written today. Recently, our nation has been in a state of uncertainty about whether we are still a country that protects its most vulnerable. Safety net programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Medicaid, which provides health benefits to over 70 million Americans, have been subject to funding cuts under the One Big Beautiful Bill act signed in July. Programs meant to protect those at risk are in danger of being gutted, leaving millions of Americans without basics such as food and healthcare. The image of Victor and his father in 1929, as beaten dogs eating out of the trash because of an unreliable government is not necessarily outdated when forty million people are likely to lose food benefits due to the mega bill’s new cuts. These dangerous changes are the result of an administration that strongarms our nation’s federal agencies to do what it wants with threats of job removals, fines, and cuts to funding. If they capitulate, our president takes to his social media platform to praise them for making the right choice. He believes that by overtaking safety net programs and relief agencies, he is doing what is best for the country. Walter explains this very kind of disillusionment when he states, “Power can do that. You get to think that because you can frighten people they love you. Even that you love them—And the whole thing comes down to fear.”In addition to the way in which Dirden’s revival is politically relevant today, the production also pushes today’s audience to focus on deeply personal issues. Miller’s characters try desperately to understand one another. In a world rife with digital communication (or miscommunication, for that matter), it was refreshing to see siblings as physically close to each other as Isola and Kenzler were, with spit flying on stage, simply trying to understand what the other means. The frustrations among the cast were palpable when attempts to understand one another failed.Furthermore, in a world where what we see in the media can be altered, what we think we know is becoming increasingly difficult to decipher. Audience members can empathize with Victor as he struggles with what he remembers to be true. He apparently knew his father had money, yet he chose to see the starving, beaten dog who was too ashamed to walk in the street. Victor and Esther’s struggle in the years that followed forced him to examine the price he had paid for his denial of the truth. “What is the difference, what you know?” Victor asks aloud. The audience is left to wonder, isn’t that the biggest difference? Walter later admits, “We invent ourselves to deny what we know.” It is clear that neither brother can face reality. And who can blame them? Reality can be unbearable.In the end, it is Solomon who gets the last laugh. He winds up the player and places the needle, once again, on the laughing record. Esther remarks to him as the play concludes, “You believe what you see . . . Maybe that’s why you’re still going.” As the set disappears, Van Wagner gives audiences his most hysterical laughter as he bids us goodbye. Is this laughter genuine, or another consequence of disillusionment? Is believing only in what we see the key to longevity? Is it the truth that poisons us and our relationships? Questions like this one shaped Dirden’s approach to how he directed the production. “My job as a director,” he said “is really about problem solving. It’s about taking the questions being asked and presenting them with absolute clarity. I’ve got to find a way to implicate everyone. That’s the only way it works for me.” True to his word, Dirden’s production willed audience members to look beyond the characters and question themselves. Rather than passively sitting back and being entertained, this production gave watchers an opportunity to confront both Miller’s questions as well as their own about what we sacrifice when we turn a blind eye to the truth.