Dealing In A Family's Pain

Theater J Highlights Value of 'The Price'

A bleeding lip didn't keep Robert Prosky off his game Wednesday night at Theater J, where a confident, disquieting production of "The Price" became the first of three anticipated Arthur Miller dramas to play Washington this month.

Prosky had a couple of reasons to feel comfortable on the boards, even after earlier that day suffering what theater officials called a nasty fall. For one, the veteran Washington actor's track record with "The Price" is pretty good. He won the Helen Hayes Award for his 1994 Arena Stage turn as Gregory Solomon, a charming, 89-year-old used-furniture dealer mediating between two feuding brothers.

And then there's the fact that this show, which comes to Theater J via Cape May, N.J., and Philadelphia, is awash in Proskys. One of Prosky's sons, Andrew, plays Victor Franz, a longtime cop who's finally trekked up to the family attic to deal with the heavy furniture and still heavier memories. Another Prosky son, John, portrays Victor's elder brother, Walter, a successful surgeon who hasn't spoken to Victor in years.

The senior Prosky is as smooth as ever as Solomon, a silver-tongued haggler who dances and weaves out of reach as Victor keeps asking what kind of price he can get for his attic full of dusty stuff. It's a soft-shoe performance, with Robert Prosky coyly dropping astute punch lines and then retreating to peruse the goods, piled so high in Robert Kramer's design that the clutter threatens to overwhelm the small stage.

As the Franz brothers, the Prosky kids are more than all right, shrewdly preventing the audience from taking sides in the siblings' compelling dispute. Andrew Prosky's Victor looks and acts like a city cop (the setting is late-1960s Manhattan), shoving his hands deep in the pockets of his uniform and listening skeptically. Victor is nearly 50 and has a wife, Esther (Leisa Mather), who's ready for her perpetually self-sacrificing husband to either catch a break or boldly make one.

Walter's on the other side: a successful surgeon, and with the necessary self-interest to advance himself in life. As Miller sets things up, Walter's poised to be the villain, but John Prosky brings a nifty mix of dapper flair and ginger apology to the role.

That's what Miller wants: to keep knocking audiences off-balance even as they're drawn further into the family fold. The drama, which plays out in real time (Miller even advised against an intermission, although director Michael Carleton uses one here), scrapes away layer after layer of action and inaction, of scalding blame and poisonous self-deception. Both brothers live in the shadow of their long-dead father's sudden poverty and lingering decline, and Miller ruthlessly pursues haunting questions of love, loyalty and the flexible moral systems by which we live.

This is arguably Miller at his best and most characteristic, asking complicated questions and never settling for cheap drama or easy answers. The show increases in scale with each new argumentative twist, gathering wisdom from the outsider Solomon and urgency from Mather's appropriately needy turn as Esther.

Solomon and Walter have individual regrets that seem to echo a recent revelation about Miller: the fact that the playwright fathered a Down syndrome son whom he quickly institutionalized and rarely acknowledged. The 2005 Vanity Fair article detailing that history isn't required reading before seeing this show -- the one Miller wrote after that birth and abandonment -- but it certainly adds value.

And although this is not the inspired, majestic rendition of "The Price" that Robert Prosky anchored at Arena (where "Death of a Salesman" and "A View From the Bridge" are imminent), it aggressively presses forward, never much putting a foot wrong as it reinforces Miller's particular combination of strengths. The conscience is provocatively pummeled, and the heart very nearly breaks.

The Price, by Arthur Miller. Directed by Michael Carleton. Lights, Jason Arnold; costumes, Colleen Grady. About 2 hours 20 minutes. Through April 18 at Theater J, 1529 16th St. NW. Call 800-494-TIXS or visit http://www.boxofficetickets.com.

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