The Price At Circa

The Price At Circa

By ARTHUR MILLER

Directed by SUSAN WILSON

Opens CIRCA ONE

Saturday 10th August 8pm


"One of the most engrossing and entertaining plays that Miller has ever written … he holds the interest with the skill of a born story-teller …. superbly theatrical"

– New York Times

The Price, one of master playwright Arthur Miller’s most successful plays, is a funny and deeply moving story of two brothers in conflict over their father.

In 1968, in an attic room crowded with the furniture of their youth, the brothers meet again after sixteen years. The Great Crash of 1929 had ruined their widowed father. Victor, loyal to his father dropped out of college to earn a living for them both, and ended up in the police force. Walter went on to become a wealthy surgeon. Now the building where they used to live is to be torn down, and the furniture must be sold. The question of how to divide the proceeds cuts open the long-buried lives of both men, as well as that of Victor’s wife, Esther, and reveals the choices each has made, and the consequences they now have to face.

Between them is an unlikely arbiter – a ninety-year old Russian Jewish junk merchant, a surrogate father sitting in the paternal chair, commenting, sympathising, reprimanding and advising, before counting out the money – the price paid for the decisions of a lifetime.

“You wanted a real life. And that’s an expensive thing. It costs.” – Walter

“I look at my life and the whole thing is incomprehensible to me.” – Victor

“…everything has to be disposable. Because you see the main thing today is shopping. Years ago a person, he was unhappy, didn’t know what to do with himself; he go to church, start a revolution, something. Today you’re unhappy? Can’t figure it out? What is the salvation? Go shopping.” – Solomon

Miller is best known for his large-scale award-winning plays Death of a Salesman (Circa 2006), The Crucible and All My Sons (Circa 2012), but The Price is Miller at his most intimate.

“The sources of a play are both obvious and mysterious,” says Miller. “The primary force driving The Price was a tangle of memories of people. The central figures, the New York cop Victor Franz and his elder brother, Walter, are not precise portraits of people I knew long, long ago, but close enough, and Gregory Solomon, the old furniture dealer, is as close as I could get to reproducing a dealer's Russian-Yiddish accent that still tickles me whenever I hear it in memory.

The Price also grew out of a need to reconfirm the power of the past, the seedbed of current reality, and the way to possibly reaffirm cause and effect in an insane world. These things move together, idea feeding characters and characters deepening idea.”

The past, says Miller, “looked at bravely, can liberate ....”

THE PRICE

By ARTHUR MILLER

Directed by SUSAN WILSON




"Scintillating, powerful and moving … with lots of comedy … drama in a league of its own " – Telegraph

“Resonates more than ever” - The List

Starring

RAY HENWOOD, GAVIN RUTHERFORD, JUDE GIBSON, CHRISTOPHER BROUGHAM


Set Design - John Hodgkins; Lighting Design – Marcus McShane; Costume Design – Gillie Coxill;

// 10th AUGUST – 7th SEPTEMBER

1 Taranaki Street, Wellington


$25 SPECIALS - Friday 9th August – 8pm; Sunday 11th August – 4pm;


AFTER SHOW FORUM – Tuesday 13th August

Performance times: Tuesday & Wednesday - 6.30pm

Thursday, Friday, Saturday - 8pm

Sunday - 4pm

Ticket Prices: Adults - $46; Concessions - $38; Friends of Circa - $33

Under 25s - $25; Groups 6+ - $39

THE PRICE is proudly supported by

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BOOKINGS Circa Theatre 1 Taranaki Street, Wellington

Phone 801 7992 www.circa.co.nz

For interviews, photographs and further information please contact:

Claire Treloar Ph (04) 386 2930 claire-t@xtra.co.nz

ARTHUR MILLER - Playwright


Arthur Miller was born on October 17, 1915 in New York City, the son of Polish-Jewish immigrants. Miller’s father manufactured woman's coats, but his business was devastated by the Depression, seeding his son's disillusionment with the American Dream.

On graduating from University of Michigan Miller received a Theatre Guild National Award and returned to New York to write. His first big success came in 1947 with All My Sons, which became a Broadway hit, winning Miller a Tony Award and the NY Drama Critics Circle Award. It was just a taste of what was to come.

Death of a Salesman opened in February 1949 and closed 742 performances later in November 1950. The play was the sensation of the season, stunning audiences with its brilliance. In terms of its power to move an audience, Arthur Miller was considered to have created the greatest work of American fictive writing and Death of a Salesman was quickly earmarked as a classic of the modern theatre. It won six Tony Awards including Best Play and Best Author, and Miller also won the 1949 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

In 1953 The Crucible was produced on Broadway winning another Tony Award for Miller. It was clear to many people that The Crucible's subtext was about contemporary witch-hunts orchestrated by Senator Joseph McCarthy in the early 1950s. McCarthy’s Senate hearings were supposed to flush out suspected communists from government and other areas of American life, including the Arts. Called before the committee, Miller refused to testify against his friends and was convicted of contempt of court. As a result, he was, for a time, blacklisted, but the conviction was reversed by the Appeal Court 15 months later.

The Price premiered on Broadway on 7th February 1968, and played for over a year (429 performances). It was nominated Best Play at the Tny Awards, and was adapted for television in 1971.

Miller who was politically active throughout his life continued to write plays, film and television scripts and essays, his most notable works being the plays A View from the Bridge (1955) and Broken Glass (1994) and the autobiography Timebends: A Life (1987).

From 1965 to 1968 Miller was President of the writers' group, PEN and in 1995 he was made Cameron Mackintosh Professor Of Contemporary Theatre at Oxford University.

Arthur Miller died on 10 February 2005.

From the cast of THE PRICE …


Ray Henwood

(Meet the Churchills, A Christmas Carol)

I first played in The Price back in 1969, a year after its first performance in New York. After over forty years it is as relevant as ever and is still the same engrossing evening in the theatre as ever. Miller is the consummate storyteller and holds you spellbound to the end. Enjoy!

Gavin Rutherford

(Clybourne Park, All My Sons)

After over twenty productions at Circa I finally get to work with Ray Henwood! What a privilege! We look forward to bringing you this brilliant drama of family and choices by an author at the very height of his mountainous abilities.

Jude Gibson

(When the Rain Stops Falling, My First Time)

Although I have enjoyed and loved Arthur Miller’s plays for many years, this is the first Miller play I have ever performed. I had never read The Price until now, and cannot help but wonder why it has not been done more often. It is a beautifully sculpted play, with four richly written characters, full of humour, conflict and poignancy. It has provoked me to consider some of the choices I have made in my life, and the price of each of them.

Christopher Brougham

(All My Sons, When the Rain Stops Falling)

If you're an Arthur Miller fan, The Price is unmissable. Unlike Circa's 2012 production of All My Sons, this brooding much more intimate play doesn't rely on explosive revelations and high drama. Instead it draws on razor-sharp dialogue and mounting tensions to explore the price two brothers pay for their decisions. It promises to be a thought-provoking and absorbing production that's in great hands. Come see it.

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