Showcasing ‘The Price’ of Ultimate Sibling Clash

Arthur Miller’s “The Price” is an interesting play at best. Miller is one of those playwrights who seems for the most part stuck in the emotional turmoil of his youth, and this play does allow him to pull out some of his old favorite stock situations and characters.

There are the brothers holding a grudge, still fighting for supremacy in the family unit. There is the disgruntled wife angry at a life wasted. And of course there’s Miller’s frequent main character, the Great Depression, which has wreaked vengeance many years before the brothers’ final confrontation.

This revival of Miller’s 1968 drama at Newport Theatre Arts Center, under the smooth direction of Terri Miller Schmidt, falls into some of Miller’s traps but at the same time manages to avoid a lot of them. On Linda Garen Smith’s moody, detailed attic apartment set, piled with the remnants of the life of the siblings’ father, Schmidt moves her actors with comfortable reality, amid a sense of the apartment being a battlefield.

She hasn’t been able, though, to create the same sense of reality in the brothers’ actual sparring. Victor (Jeff Bickel) has to sell their father’s furnishings and other belongings before the building is torn down. Although Victor has left messages for brother Walter (Gene Fiskin), Walter has not answered and shows up unexpectedly just as Victor is about to make the deal on the price.

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Victor and Walter open up all the wounds that have been festering many years. Neither side wins the bitter battle despite heartbreaking revelations. Fiskin’s self-assured, often casual front as the successful Walter is just right in Schmidt’s balance of the play’s power. Fiskin also lets the tiniest feeling of pomposity color his reading, which works well. Bickel isn’t as successful with the failure, both professionally and personally, that Victor has become. His readings are too powerless even for Victor, and Bickel misses many chances for a fuller characterization.

Ilona Honeyman is Victor’s shrewish wife, Esther, who thought her marriage boded a better future. She has made the mistake of taking Miller’s stereotypical aggressive, ambitious shrike and making her even more shrill, rather than finding any of the warmth in her that might make Victor’s affection logical.

The performance of the evening is that of Ron Rudolph as Gregory Solomon, the octogenarian Jewish appraiser who wants to buy the lot and who becomes a sort of referee in the struggle among Victor and Walter and Esther. Rudolph is funny, warm and real. His anger and his little victories are painted in exquisite detail. As Schmidt says in her program note, this is a play about choices, and Rudolph’s appraiser--both as a character and as a performance--makes all the right choices.

* “The Price,” Newport Theatre Arts Center, 2501 Cliff Drive, Newport Beach. Thursday-Saturday, 8 p.m.; Sunday, 2:30 p.m. Ends March 9. $13. (714) 631-0288. Running time: 2 hours, 45 minutes.

Jeff Bickel: Victor Franz

Ron Rudolph: Gregory Solomon

Ilona Honeyman: Esther Franz

Gene Fiskin: Walter Franz

A Newport Theatre Arts Center production of Arthur Miller’s drama. Produced by Jack Millis. Directed by Terri Miller Schmidt. Scenic design: Linda Garen Smith. Lighting design: John Fejes. Costume design: Tom Phillips. Stage manager: Terri Collins.