Arthur Miller as Gnostic

Here’s what happens in Arthur Miller’s new play. The Price.

A fifty-year-old New York police sergeant and his brother, a surgeon recovering from a nervous breakdown, meet after sixteen years to sell the family furniture, stored in a brownstone, to a dealer. The family was once rich but was ruined in the 1929 crash. The sergeant abandoned college to support his dispirited father and over the years has held a secret grudge against his brother, who plunged ahead with his education and did little to help the old man. There are long, agonized examinations of motives, and in the end the sergeant and his wife are purged of some of their illusions and come to accept their unhappy lot. The surgeon, on the other hand, learns little and appears condemned to a life of guilt and bitterness.

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Charles Monaghan

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Here’s what happens in Arthur Miller’s new play. The Price.

A fifty-year-old New York police sergeant and his brother, a surgeon recovering from a nervous breakdown, meet after sixteen years to sell the family furniture, stored in a brownstone, to a dealer. The family was once rich but was ruined in the 1929 crash. The sergeant abandoned college to support his dispirited father and over the years has held a secret grudge against his brother, who plunged ahead with his education and did little to help the old man. There are long, agonized examinations of motives, and in the end the sergeant and his wife are purged of some of their illusions and come to accept their unhappy lot. The surgeon, on the other hand, learns little and appears condemned to a life of guilt and bitterness.