The Price

[Deleted]

Jan 9, 2019 15:54:10 GMT Snciole said:

I've got an opportunity to send Adrian Lukis some questions for View from the Cheap Seat? Does anyone have anything they want to ask about the production?

Adrian, if all goes well in rehearsals and indeed The Price turns out to be right, will the audience at the end be asked to "come on down"?

[joem]

Saw this with Warren Mitchell. Can't remember thinking at the time this was one of Miller's best.

Latest pricing scam: TWO sets of premium tickets! I imagine the long-term plan is to eventually make all stalls and good circle seats "premium".

[TallPaul]

What puzzles me about premium seats is where do the Producers and VIPs now sit, when 'their' seats were sold six months ago?

This from the DMT website: "A limited number of the very best seats, previously held for the Producers or VIPs, are now available to book in advance."

I do sometimes think we are taken for fools.

[TallPaul]

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for the free market, and charging what the market will (Burly) bear, but all I want is honesty.

If large numbers of premium seats go on sale on the first day of booking, then I would argue that they are neither limited*, in the generally accepted sense of the word, nor previously held, unless by previously they mean pre Book of Mormon.

* I appreciate all theatres have a limited number of seats, but I mean small in number.

[Phantom of London]

I gave a mini observation on page 1 of this thread.

Now it is transferring, I would say David Suchet has the Olivier in the bag for this one, oddly enough he has never won an Olivier, which is a mini scandal in itself. He certainly raised the bar, in this onem when I saw it in Theatre Royal, Bath - his performance was very nuanced, superb and shone. I remember his performance today, as it was yesterday.

[showgirl]

I'm hoping to see this & think Adrian Lukis is strangely under-rated & should be better known.

[lonlad]

No reports on this yet after three previews??

[catcat100]

Feb 6, 2019 23:19:49 GMT lonlad said:

No reports on this yet after three previews??

Its long!!

Bloke next to me had the right idea and fell asleep through most of it.

Think this could have had a good 20-30 mins knocked off and be much better for it. Quite a slow builder in the first half with David Suchet doing all the comedy legwork.

Second half comes along and it all escalates and we sort of just lose David. The warring brothers keep on digging in and it all gets a bit confusing with all the different revelations.

Not a terrible play at all, just a bit too much for me tonight.

 

[david]

I popped into the theatre this morning to enquire about day seats and the box office manager did say day seats are being offered at £25 each.

[Mark]

Feb 9, 2019 22:48:36 GMT david said:

I popped into the theatre this morning to enquire about day seats and the box office manager did say day seats are being offered at £25 each.

Same! Although they were all gone by 12:15 unfortunately.

[david]

Feb 9, 2019 23:21:53 GMT Mark said:

Feb 9, 2019 22:48:36 GMT david said:

I popped into the theatre this morning to enquire about day seats and the box office manager did say day seats are being offered at £25 each.

Same! Although they were all gone by 12:15 unfortunately.

Planning on watching this in April so I’ll get there early doors. I really want to see David Suchet on stage. 

[learfan]

Saw the matinee today. Third production ive seen. Really good. Suchet steals it of course but then it is that kind of part. Great set too. Recommended.

[lynette]

This is very good. All the cast outstanding. Suchet turns in a blinder which pulls you in and keeps you there. But what a play? Such twists and turns and wonderful writing. Nice set though personally I didn’t like the fantasy piles of stuff, I would have liked to keep it real. Just me.

[mallardo]

A strange play. Two brothers, Vic and Walter, meet again after 16 years in the shambles of their late father's home and explosively confront the issues that have kept them apart for so long - and yet the focus of the piece is grabbed, from his first entrance, by the quirky old furniture dealer, Solomon, who has come to appraise the stock, so to speak. What was Arthur Miller's reasoning?

It's a play clearly based on Miller's own family, a play with deep personal resonances for him, yet he deliberately leavens the intensity of the drama with an outsider, an essentially comic character, so wonderfully wrought that he was bound to steal the show. It reminds me of another work from the same period - the 60s - also dredged from Miller's own life, After The Fall, a play about Marilyn Monroe which never quite comes to grip with its subject, as if it is too painful to deal with head on.

But having noted that, The Price, for all its structural unorthodoxy, is a much better play than After the Fall and, in fact, works. The clash of brothers, confined to the second act, is brilliantly handled and fiercely written while the long first act setup, the Solomon show, is entertaining and ultimately meaningful - the appraiser's bargaining for his price metaphorically reflective of the brothers' situation.  

Solomon is, of course, played here by David Suchet and he takes every advantage of the gift of a role he has been given - a consummate performance. But kudos too to Brendan Coyle as Vic, the unsuccessful brother, who never leaves the stage and is, in fact, the lead in the play. Coyle is strong and characterful throughout in both the light and heavy moments and deserves much of the credit for the show's success.

And this production is a success, without a doubt. Under Jonathan Church's solid direction Miller's structural instincts for the piece are proven to be correct. Well done to all.

[NeilVHughes]

lynette , pleased you enjoyed it after our chat the other week.

[Someone in a tree]

Feb 22, 2019 9:40:56 GMT mallardo said:

A strange play. Two brothers, Vic and Walter, meet again after 16 years in the shambles of their late father's home and explosively confront the issues that have kept them apart for so long - and yet the focus of the piece is grabbed, from his first entrance, by the quirky old furniture dealer, Solomon, who has come to appraise the stock, so to speak. What was Arthur Miller's reasoning?

It's a play clearly based on Miller's own family, a play with deep personal resonances for him, yet he deliberately leavens the intensity of the drama with an outsider, an essentially comic character, so wonderfully wrought that he was bound to steal the show. It reminds me of another work from the same period - the 60s - also dredged from Miller's own life, After The Fall, a play about Marilyn Monroe which never quite comes to grip with its subject, as if it is too painful to deal with head on.

But having noted that, The Price, for all its structural unorthodoxy, is a much better play than After the Fall and, in fact, works. The clash of brothers, confined to the second act, is brilliantly handled and fiercely written while the long first act setup, the Solomon show, is entertaining and ultimately meaningful - the appraiser's bargaining for his price metaphorically reflective of the brothers' situation.  

Solomon is, of course, played here by David Suchet and he takes every advantage of the gift of a role he has been given - a consummate performance. But kudos too to Brendan Coyle as Vic, the unsuccessful brother, who never leaves the stage and is, in fact, the lead in the play. Coyle is strong and characterful throughout in both the light and heavy moments and deserves much of the credit for the show's success.

And this production is a success, without a doubt. Under Jonathan Church's solid direction Miller's structural instincts for the piece are proven to be correct. Well done to all.

Welcome back, good to see you again :-)

[mallardo]

Feb 22, 2019 14:39:13 GMT Someone in a tree said:

Feb 22, 2019 9:40:56 GMT mallardo said:

Welcome back, good to see you again :-)

Thanks.  Been in the US for a while soaking up the toxic atmosphere.  Glad to be back.

[Deleted]

Feb 9, 2019 22:48:36 GMT david said:

I popped into the theatre this morning to enquire about day seats and the box office manager did say day seats are being offered at £25 each.

Thanks for sharing. After seeing Suchet prowling the stage in that Pinter play last year, I had I wanted to see this, and now I have data to make that happen!

[joem]

Not Miller at his best. The first half has a fair amount of laughs, unusually for old Stoneface, most of them coming from a typically ebullient performance by David Suchet.

But the second half drags on and on and on, despite the cast's best efforts, with another of those plays where characters pick at the entrails of things they did or didn't do thirty years ago which, frankly, seem to have acquired a resonance which is hardly justified by their import. It is possible to lend fate a hand every so often, some Miller characters are too weighed down by karma to rage against the dying of the light.

Attractive set (somewhat reminiscent of the Ink set last year?) but there isn't enough Suchet in the second half of the play which is mostly devoted to an interminable argument between the two brothers with occasional despairing interjections from the wife/sister-in-law.

[zephyrus]

Having missed previous productions of this Miller play, I was curious to see The Price earlier this week. I thought it was well-acted, but a bit over-long (the second act is very talky) and, without wanting to sound uncharitable, I am slightly baffled by Adrian Lukis's Olivier nomination...

[orchidman]

Appears that Brendan Coyle has been off for about a week. Saw his understudy Sion Lloyd tonight and he was very good, although hadn't realised he'd had a little time to bed in. Coyle is probably a little old for the part but haven't seen his performance, certainly would be a different feel to Mark Ruffalo who was the right age (and a very well preserved example of it) in terms of the character talking about changing careers and a new vocation.

Think this is one of Miller's best plays and the recent Broadway success and now this production will elevate its reputation.

[wannabedirector]

Saw this on Monday evening, Brendan Coyle was also off then but as above I thought the understudy was very good. Overall, although I’m usually a fan of Arthur Miller’s work, I don’t think this is anywhere near his strongest play, it did begin to drag a bit, especially after the interval. There are some good performance, especially from David Suchet, and I was a fan of the set design, but I feel this might have been a little bit overrated by critics.

[jgblunners]

I'm afraid this didn't really click for me. Suchet is brilliant, and Lukis and Stewart were pretty darn good too, but Coyle was just OK. I struggled to remain interested in Act Two - after such an unpredictable and mysterious Act One with Suchet's character, the descent into family squabbles fell a bit flat. On its own, the confrontation of the two brothers would make a brilliant and intense play, but with the humorous prelude of the first act it just feels like a drag. The set design was fabulous though - at first I thought the wall of furniture was just an artistic way of representing the clutter of the loft, but as the themes of the play emerged it struck me as a rather clever way of having the family legacy constantly looming over the brothers, precariously balanced and threatening to slip and cause disaster at any point.

[david]

After watching the matinee performance this afternoon, Brendan Coyle was absent (much to the annoyance of the lady I was talking to during the interval, though she was happy that David Suchet was on stage). I have mixed feelings about this production. Firstly, I absolutely loved the attic set so 4* for that and as others have posted, how it can be used to represent the family legacy. Acting wise, (and I’ll confess here that I was here to see David Suchet) I thought he was absolutely brilliant in the role of Solomon. As soon as he first appeared on stage he had won the audience over in his first few minutes on stage. His performance was top class and he had great comic timing and even making Adrian Lukis corpse during one scene. Adrian Lukis and Sion Lloyd really came into their own in Act 2 as the recriminations of their earlier life where argued out.

On the downside, I felt that with this production, it didn’t really get going until Suchet made his first appearance, and following on from that, you could see the audience become more engaged with the production as Suchet gave an acting masterclass. When he was off stage, it was almost like there was a loss of energy from the production that Suchet brings to it and when he is absent, it was definitely missed.

Act 2 I thought really did drag a bit, though the recriminations between the 2 brothers was great to watch, though as others have mentioned, the ending did fall a little flat, particularly after the intense argument scenes earlier on.

As an aside, we had a guide dog in the auditorium today who was impeccably behaved throughout the production.

[Rory]

Has Brendan Coyle been off for a while now?