Arthur Miller’s The Price NYC Reviews and Tickets

"'The Price' is not a fast play. Nor are its stakes as abyss-facing as Miller at his most unsparing...But it is, at moments, a piercing study on familial devotion, betrayal, and disillusion...DeVito, playing the kind of irreverent, hilarious, irritation-generating dynamo that he also does so brilliantly on film—steals the audience’s attention...The play comes to feel a little stilted, its action as arrested as the characters’ emotions."
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“It’s a stilted work that spells out what should be implied and then does it again and again…I imagine it wasn’t their best night, making this post-opening performance feel more like an early preview. It didn’t help that the direction of Terry Kinney felt particularly flat and random…I truly had trouble understanding each of the characters…None of the actors made much sense of their parts but I have to think the blame lies equally on the play and this staging.”
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"A powerhouse family tale that, in the hands of Kinney and a superb cast, proves to be one of Miller’s masterpieces...The nimble Hecht, the ever-elegant Shalhoub, and the brusque Ruffalo form an intimate trio, three pros at the top of their game...DeVito makes an impressive Broadway debut...Kinney gets right to the heart of the play, examining the choices we all make and the costs, visible and hidden, that come with them...In this glorious revival, money, of course, is never the answer."
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"A perfect example of how superb actors can make good theater out of a less-than-wonderful play...The brothers' confrontation, which takes up much of the second act, is more diagrammatic than dramatic...Crucially, though, we feel connected to the characters, or at least to the performances...'The Price' has more than a whiff of contrivance, but its resourceful actors manage to humanize it to a remarkable degree."
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"I can see why 'The Price' isn’t staged as frequently as the Miller classics. The second act spins into an exhausting cyclone of old slights and misunderstandings to justify the silences between siblings. Director Terry Kinney does his best to keep things reeled in, but some of the interaction between the brothers borders on tedious...In the hands of a quartet as skilled as this, what we’re left remembering finally is not Miller’s art, but something of a master class in great performing."
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“An entertaining but also long-winded slice of life...It is to Miller’s credit, as well as to the credit of director Kinney, that this very human but agonizing play succeeds not so much with crafty intensifications but more with its subjective implications…There is an ever-increasing poignancy in Ruffalo’s performance…Kinney has invested this soul-searching play with the patience that it probably deserves even when our patience with its issues wears a bit thin.”
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"It is still topical and relevant, for it deals with how the past catches up with all of us...Mr. Miller is a master at confrontational dialog and he’s in top form in this outing. He’s helped enormously by the beautiful work of Mark Ruffalo and Tony Shalhoub...Ms. Hecht...turning a supporting role into a star turn...Danny DeVito is a revelation...I’ve only seen one other production of this play, the original one, but I found this outing far more fruitful."
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"Under Terry Kinney’s direction, Ruffalo projects a sort of Brandoesque brooding, until exploding with a riveting fury. Jessica Hecht gives a typically quirky and credible performance as his wife...Shalhoub comes off slick as a man who says he had a breakdown, but is now happy...Best of all is DeVito who, despite an accent that comes and goes, is priceless as the man who takes out an egg and eats it (a hilarious scene)."
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