Press Coverage For "The Price"


Shadowland Theatre Marks 25th Season
By Bonnie Langston
The Daily Freeman

The 25th anniversary season of Shadowland Theatre, in Ellenville, will kick off May 29 with Arthur Miller’s “The Price” featuring notables Orson Bean and Stephanie Zimbalist.

Bean, a stage, film and TV actor, is known for his longtime role as a panelist in television’s “To Tell the Truth,” while Zimbalist grabbed the attention of viewers in her portrayal of Laura Holt on the NBC detective series “Remington Steele.”

“The Price,” a title that refers to the cost of decisions people make in their lives, first appeared on stage in 1968.  But Brendan Burke, Shadowland’s producing artistic director, said the drama’s message is as pertinent today as it was then.

“As society cycles around, (Miller’s) plays become relevant again every 20 years.  I mean, they’re always relevant, but really timely again every so often,” Burke said.  “We did ‘All My Sons’ a few years ago, which could have been ripped right out of the headlines, although that was a play originally written in the 1950s.  ‘The Crucible’ is another example.”

The remaining season also comprises “Almost Maine,” “Gutenberg! The Musical!” “Accomplice” and “American Buffalo.”  The plays include a comedy, small musical and a few “edgier” — thought-provoking, relevant and less frequently staged pieces — a formula that has worked well for the theater through the years, Burke said.

In “The Price,” Zimbalist plays the wife of a city cop who sacrificed his life to care for his father, who lost everything in The Great Depression.  Bean is the comic relief as a crafty, ancient antique dealer.

“It’s a wonderful, wonderful role,” Burke said, “so I can’t imagine he’s going to be anything less than brilliant in it.  He’s perfect for it.”
 

Review: 'The Price' at Shadowland Theatre in Ellenville
By James F. Cotter
Times-Herald Record
 

To open the 25th season at Shadowland, Orson Bean and Stephanie Zimbalist star in a revival of Arthur Miller's "The Price," his 1968 drama about two brothers with opposing views and ways of life who meet, after long separation, to dispose of their parents' possessions.

Brendan Patrick Burke plays Victor, a New York City cop near retirement at 50, who is embittered by the past: He stayed home to support his invalid father and sacrificed his own education to help his brother attend med school. Reathel Bean (no relation to Orson) plays Walter, a successful surgeon who turned his back on father and brother to build his own career.

Zimbalist has the role of Esther, Victor's wife, who suffers disappointment in her husband's lack of initiative and vaguely threatens to leave him. Orson Bean is Solomon, a 90-year-old appraiser who, having come to evaluate the once-fashionable furnishings, keeps up a constant spiel about life and property like his biblical namesake.

The appraiser is a character out of a Neil Simon comedy, garrulous, insidious and hilarious in Bean's portrayal with a heavy Yiddish accent and an anecdotal style that flows in absorbing monologues and quick dialogues. They save the drama from sinking into a morass of angry recriminations and gloom as the brothers and wife battle for revenge and forgiveness. Everybody has a price to pay, the appraiser's offer on the estate and the family's exacting payment for pain and suffering.

Burke is quite convincing as Victor, in his policeman's uniform, trying to believe his brother's protests of self-justification and to come to grips with his own sense of failure. Zimbalist is trim and attractive as Esther and, under the surface, upset and searching for the truth.

Reathel Bean makes Walter a complex character, just coming out of a midlife crisis and a traumatic divorce. Although he only appears at the end of the first act, his efforts to make a case for himself propel the climactic action in Act 2.

James Glossman has directed his professional actors with a strong emphasis on timing and sustained conflict, with comic relief supplied by the irrepressible Solomon. The set design by Drew Francis allows the sheet-covered household goods to reveal a gradual maze of chaos, while the costumes by Bettina Bierly capture the differences of this quartet of characters in their collision course of conflict. The Shadowland stage is ideal for this kind of drama with its intimacy for the audience and breadth and depth of space for the actors.