How tightly Arthur Miller binds the knot of family tensions in this formally strange 1967 play, which is haunted by the Depression. In the first half, New York cop Victor wrangles with the almost 90-year-old Jewish furniture dealer Solomon over the sale of his once-wealthy parents’ possessions, piled high in a cramped apartment for over 30 years after they lost almost everything in the Wall Street Crash.
In the second the wily, zesty Solomon is shuffled largely offstage to make space for a showdown between Victor and his prodigal brother Walter, a successful – but, it turns out, troubled – doctor. 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.
