The Price reviews: Henry Goodman stars in gripping Arthur Miller play in London

“Jonathan Munby’s production relishes every detail.”

“Though perhaps a touch too spry, Goodman, 76, nevertheless steals the first half as the endearing interloper, by turns calculating, stoical, impatient, and roguishly eccentric.”

“There’s matching nuance, though, from a forlorn Cowan as a man mystified as to where the years – and youthful idealism about the greater good – have gone, while Faye Castelow smartly registers the turmoil of his frustrated wife.”

"The play shouldn’t work as well as it does given the way [Miller] engineers the shift in tone around the interval, but the lulling, luring early humour sets us up perfectly for the coming sucker punch."

“Director Jonathan Munby’s sumptuously realised production successfully bridges the tonal shift between the serio-comic preamble with the surrogate father and the legacy of bitterness bequeathed to Victor and Walter by their real dad.”

“...features a bravura turn by Henry Goodman in the showboat part of Solomon before Elliot Cowan and John Hopkins assert themselves in act two.”

“Faye Castelow is also excellent in the functional part of Victor’s wife Esther - her body language and expressions are detailed and period-appropriate even when the focus is not on her.”

“Goodman, a spry and springy 76, gives little sense of decrepitude but superbly captures Solomon’s spirit. It’s up there with his superb Shylock in the Merchant, Tevye in Fiddler and his Billy Flynn in Chicago in terms of immersion in the role.”

"It is powerful, winding drama. You end up wondering why this angry, plaintive and deeply psychological play is not more often revived."

“Goodman is a sad clown, almost vaudevillian, as Solomon runs rings around Victor while Hopkins and Cowan give full-bodied performances of characters that could be seen merely as “types”.”

“Faye Castelow does a masterly job of turning the character of Victor’s frustrated wife, Esther, into a flesh and blood woman, pained by her husband’s paralysed ambition.”

“It seems lopsided in structure, the testy comedy of Act One all but banished in Act Two, along with Solomon, who is sent to a room off-stage while the brothers have their confrontation.”

"As with many of Miller’s better-known plays, it’s implacable: the past piles into the present and the action cannot stop until all the truths are out. And while this 1967 drama doesn’t have the propulsion of those earlier works, give it the care and understanding that it gets in Jonathan Munby’s excellent production, and it comes up, like an old dresser, glowing."

“Goodman is exquisite in the role, bringing pinpoint comic timing to Solomon’s moves and ambiguity to his motives — even stopping, mid-negotiation, to eat a hard-boiled egg.”

“There’s heartbreakingly precise work too from Elliot Cowan as Victor, a man who, like Willy Loman, has never felt at home in his life, and from John Hopkins as Walter, whose success has come at its own price. Faye Castelow skilfully pinpoints the frustrations of Victor’s wife, Esther.”

“Jon Bausor’s meticulous set, crammed with huge old-fashioned armoires, tables and bureaux, feels physically suffocating and drives home the metaphor: these are objects from a world that felt solid but vanished overnight.”

"Director Jonathan Munby establishes a measured, never overly pensive rhythm, giving each taut conversation room to breathe, while ensuring the pace and the building tension don’t slacken."

“Goodman’s detailed performance deliberately leaves unresolved the question as to just how ruthless and manipulative Solomon is, but he soon proves himself a masterly negotiator.”

“Miller insightfully reveals the gulf between the value we put on possessions and upon a person’s lifetime of experiences.”

"Jonathan Munby’s production is rich in detail, from Jon Bausor’s exquisitely cluttered set, dominated by oppressively dark furnishings, antique lamps and a haggled-over full-sized harp, atmospherically lit by Anna Watson, to the note-perfect acting."

“Cowan gives a towering performance in his own right, his face clenched, body language defeated, his voice a muted growl, and his eyes kind but desperately sad. He inhabits this living embodiment of the adage that good guys come last to such an extent that his emotional breakdown, when it comes, is really tough to watch, yet you can’t look away.”

“Castelow’s physicality, like a mechanical doll starting to wind down, is a fascinating distillation of the discontent growing inside Esther; the way Cowan’s Victor navigates around his late father’s empty armchair as though the old man is still present (which, in a way, he is) is infinitely moving.”

“In another impressive performance, John Hopkins invests Walter with an oil-smooth self confidence and urbane ruthlessness but makes fully credible the notes of unhappiness and instability roiling just under the surface.”

“[Goodman’s is] a stupendous, magnetic performance, one foot in the schtick of Jewish vaudeville turns and the other in the hardbitten realities of a man who has had to fight for everything he has. This is a masterclass, but it says much for the quality of the other three actors, that you don’t miss him when he’s offstage for extended sections of the second half.”

"A heavyweight creative team led by director Jonathan Munby makes the weight of this past almost tangible. With Anna Watson’s lighting picking out chairs and lamps and mementos as if they were bones, Jon Bausor’s forced-perspective set is mausoleum-like. There’s a dusty, stifling density to the piles of things that crowd out the stage."

“[Solomon] is a show-stopping character, played to twinkly inscrutable perfection by Goodman, whose shambolic bluster hovers beguilingly between sincerity and lived-in pragmatism.”

“Cowan impresses in the more thankless role of the tortured sibling, capturing the quiet desperation that underlies Victor’s resentment of Walter.”

“While it’s thrilling to see talented actors really knock chunks out of each other, with Munby excavating every ounce of pain from their performances, a sense of drag also begins to set in, as Miller circles the same arguments.”