Any production of The Price, suitably enough for a play with such a title, will hinge on balance—between the Franz brothers, Victor and Walter; between two ways of viewing the world; and between our attitudes toward Esther and Solomon. If we are being prodded toward one side or the other, the ambivalent nature of the work is lost, and we are into the realms of a thesis play. While Arthur Miller was considered out of step with social and cultural currents by the late 1960s when the play was first produced, he was not working in the same mode as he had in the 1940s and 1950s. Admittedly, he largely refused to integrate contemporary theatrical or cultural influences into the play, but his attitude to his work was sharply different from that of his early plays. All My Sons (1947), Death of a Salesman (1949), and The Crucible (1953)...

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