STAGE REVIEW : Grove Production of Miller’s ‘The Price’ Keeps Its Value

Arthur Miller is in the air. Last Sunday you could have seen Jerome Guardino’s new staging of Miller’s “The Price” (1968) at the Grove Theatre Company, then listened to the L.A. Classic Theatre Works/BBC radio production of Miller’s “The Crucible” (1952) on the drive home. We knew what power “The Crucible” still contained, especially helped on radio by high-octane stars. But has “The Price” retained its value?

Guardino’s production shows once again that little-known actors take no second seats to the Richard Dreyfusses. The anchor, the soul and the life of this show are Thomas Murphy and Daniel Bryan Cartmell as estranged brothers come together in the attic of a condemned Manhattan brownstone to sort out the material and spiritual remains of a family. Hearing “The Price” again shows what a remarkably consistent voice Miller has maintained over the years since “The Crucible.”

Victor (Murphy) is a cop nearing retirement who wants to make sure that his late parents’ furniture is sold off respectfully. His wife Esther (Shelley Poncy) just wants him to get a good price and not get snookered. It looks like he’ll get a fair deal from an old appraiser named Solomon (Bert Conway). Later, he’s not so sure.

Nor are we so sure of the play at this point. The business with Solomon is precisely about business, Miller’s perennial subject. But it’s a long wind-up to the second act’s dramatic pitch, and Guardino’s production fails to skirt the play’s middle-stretch doldrums.

Seldom has a character’s entrance done so much for a play as Walter’s (Cartmell). Guardino adds an interesting touch of replaying the first act’s last few lines at the second act’s beginning, as if to accent the crucial shift taking place. That shift is purely theatrical, because in fact little changes for the people of “The Price.” Walter, though, has left his mark.

Walter is a little like “Death of a Salesman’s” Biff fully grown, still spiteful toward his father (and Victor is not unlike an older version of Biff’s brother, Happy). But Walter has his reasons, and it’s clear that it is his rediscovered brotherly love that makes him tell Victor the truth about their past.

“A straight financial arrangement” is how Walter describes their parents’ marriage, and he caps it with as penetrating a line as Miller has ever written: “We invent ourselves, Vic, to wipe out what we know.”

This is tough love--Miller’s other subject--and it’s as difficult a set of emotional sea-changes as exist for actors. Murphy and Cartmell play the ebbs and flows brilliantly, even giving the sense, as Miller does, that reconciliation is seconds away. The scars are too deep, and these two actors do an unflamboyant yet brutal job of probing.

The other actors do much less. Conway is funny, but plays Solomon on the surfaces.

Poncy is badly miscast, too young (despite Walter’s flattering comments about her appearance), with a pent-up anger that is all superficies and mannerisms.

Lawrence Oberman’s low-key lights are drearily right, yet Gil Morales’ set is seriously understuffed, falling quite short of Miller’s play note about “the chaos of 10 rooms squeezed into this one.”

Performances are at 12852 Main St., Garden Grove, on Wednesdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m., Sundays, 7:30 p.m. (May 1, 3 p.m.), until May 7. Tickets: $12-$15; (714) 636-7213.