The Price Is Right (ish)

I’m on the bike today, the ‘highlight’ of which, comes on the way home. I’d got a fair old pace on when some local loon in a silly hat jumps out at me. Whether the idea of this is that he wants a bike travelling at around 25mph to run over him, which hurts quite a lot, or whether he wants to make me swerve into the traffic, therefore killing myself I’m not sure. Somehow I manage to avoid doing either but landing on the youth was favourite. Then as I slow down to give him a mouthful over my shoulder, I notice the girl that he was ‘with’ and presumably trying to ‘impress’, by his misinformed definition of the word, has saved me the trouble by slapping him pretty hand across the face. Bravo. Guess he won’t be getting his leg over either. Ha.

Son is off out on an eighteenth birthday party tonight and L has swapped the chequered shirt for something that is more in keeping with son's discerning tastes, a Cookie Monster t-shirt. I’m not sure whether that will enhance his pulling power but what do I know. If it works I’ll get my friend the speed-dater one.

After cycling home, it’s a quick change of kit before I head out for a run with the dogs and L. I’m feeling rather knackered after that, so I hope tonight’s entertainment ‘The Price’ by Arthur Miller is lively enough to keep me awake. Arthur Miller though, to my knowledge, doesn’t do lively.

Thankfully we arrive too late to get a drink in, which could really have pushed me over the edge, but by half time we are both positively gagging for one.

Now I have to say, this play was L’s idea, e.g. not my fault, although we both do like to see the ‘classics’. What clinched it though, was the £5 last minute tickets, which simply yelled out ‘come on down, the price is right’.

It’s 1968. Victor, a police sergeant, who is coming up for retirement and his wife, Esther, who may have a bit of a drink problem but we don’t go there, are trying to dispose of a pile of family belongings, after his father’s death. These items bring back many troubled memories for Victor, going back thirty years or more.

Victor’s brother should really be involved in this process but its sixteen years since they last spoke. Walter is a successful doctor who doesn’t have time for his brother, not that Victor is very keen to see him either. Instead Victor agrees a price for everything with an elderly furniture dealer called Solomon. All of this, very simply plot, is debated in long drawn out detail. Then at the end of act one, Victor turns up to cast doubt on the agreed price. Cue stampede to the bar.

Never has a drink, even when it’s Deuchars IPA, seemed so welcome. I've been to see many many plays but I can honestly say I’ve never been to the theatre where the audience has been so restless, well nothing where the audience was out of short trousers. L clearly has been struggling to stay afloat throughout the first act but I’m sure the girl on my other side had succumbed; either that or she was being overtly friendly. Twice her head hit my arm.

After the interval, the brother’s rake over their past and we find there’s more baggage being lumped around by them than by a couple of forty-something’s at a speed dating event. The price it seems is not just a financial one.



The stage set was good, realistic and filled with meticulous detail. The acting too was good, in fact superb. It’s just the material left something to be desired. I didn’t really care about the brother’s past or their present for that matter.

They say ‘The Price’ is not one of Miller’s best and they’d be right. There’s a lot of arguing which never really seemed to go anywhere. Think ‘Rachel Getting Married’ but without Anne Hatherway to look at. You come away still not really sure what their issues were, why it took then sixteen years to speak and even after all that, nothing got sorted. I suppose this sort of family dispute happens but you don’t usually pay to sit through it.

The lesson, I suppose, is that we all have to live with the price of our decisions. Our decision tonight cost us £5. That I can live with.