ARTHUR Miller’s 1968 play has a deceptively simple story.
Victor Franz (Eric Petterson, transferring from Maskers Theatre with this, his superb début for Chesil), a New York cop nervously approaching retirement, accompanies his wife Esther (Maria Head) to the brownstone left by his deceased parents, hoping to sell their remaining chattel (a harp, a paddle, some dresses) to Solomon (Noel Thorpe-Tracey), an engaging but dubious dealer, whose price Victor’s brother Walter (David Baldwin) – a US style ‘Doctor’ – thinks, when he shows up, he can outdo.
Within that we get the brothers’ conflict, deep reflections on what constitutes a life well lived, and an absorbing picture of the Franz family history.
This production, under Tom Williams’ meticulous direction, gives a vivid sense of time and circumstances – from the great Depression to Sixties ‘affluence’ – and so chimes with our own times to moving effect, as the life choices and consequences of all the characters are considered.
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