The Price, Arthur Miller’s 1968 play examining the relationship between two brothers who dealt with their family’s fall from (financial) grace during the Great Depression in very different ways, casts only four roles. But as younger brother Victor (played by the sometimes stumbling, but ultimately effective Mark Ruffalo) opens the show with a silent exploration of the overstuffed apartment of his youth, it becomes apparent that the doomed former home is more than a setting, but a fifth character, about to be left not because Victor has no unfinished business there, but because the city is tearing the entire apartment down. So, on a timeline he didn’t choose, Victor invites an appraiser into his family home to see what his mother’s harp, his father’s chair, and all the other accessories of the lavish life they led before the crash might be worth. And, to an even greater extent, see what their whole history and relationship might be worth to his estranged brother.
Gregory Solomon, possibly retired appraiser, played by a show-stealing Danny DeVito, is more than the comic relief of the show, he’s the life of it. As he wanders through the apartment, more willing to share stories of his colorful past than to name a price he’s willing to pay for the collection, Victor gets frustrated but is still obviously charmed by the funny and frank old man. It’s the clearest sense we get of who Victor is, after decades in a job he took out of necessity and a sense of familial responsibility. He’s angry, but not made up of pure bitterness—he can still laugh with a stranger. Later in the show, as his wife and brother suggest Mr. Solomon might not be offering the best price for the furniture, Victor bristles, seemingly just as upset he might be seen as naive as with the implication this last piece of family business is only about the money.
Each actor takes the stage in Roundabout Theatre Company’s revival of the nearly fifty-year-old show to thunderous applause, making it clear that this is a show not just anchored, but completely cast with celebrities easily recognizable outside the theater world. Any audience member is just as likely to be excited to see “the guy from Monk” as a real life Avenger.