UML students and faculty applaud The Price
Katrina Espiritu

Both funny and dramatic, Charles Towers’ production of Arthur Miller’s The Price does not cease to amaze the audience as a well directed play, a fantastic cast of talented actors, and a stage setting that captures the feeling of a 1965 attic cluttered with antiques.

In the first opening of the play, UMass Lowell students and staff attended the production that was performed in the Merrimack Repertory Theatre in downtown Lowell.

Towers, the director, captivated the very essence of what Miller was trying to portray: a complicated relationship between two brothers who fall out of touch due to their past.

The play took place in an attic full of old furniture in the fall of 1965. An over stressed cop, Victor Franz (Christopher McHale) ready for retirement, was obligated to sell the furniture of his late father. He called in an appraiser, 98-year old Gregory Solomon (David Rogers), to set a price for all the furniture in the attic. Victor’s high maintenance wife, Esther (Monique Fowler), was not easily ignored with her demand for a good price from Solomon. As the price was set for $1200 (which today amounts to about $7020), Victor’s successful surgeon brother, Walter Franz (W.T. Martin), strolled in to stir up old emotions that lingered over the years.

The past seemed to stir up emotions that the Franz brothers had bottled up for decades. Despite series of arguments Victor and Walter had about their anger and resentment of each other, Solomon was able to add some comical relief to the silencing dramatic scenes.

The actors were brilliant with bringing forth a variety of emotions that made the setting and its plot come alive. Fowler, McHale, Martin, and Rogers were terrific at portraying their characters with such an unnerving exactness of a money-hungry wife, an overwhelmed policeman, a proud surgeon, and an old experienced appraiser.

The actors’ performance along with Towers’ excellent directing was credited with a standing ovation by the audience.

“I enjoyed the play. The actors were brilliant, and I thought the set design was extremely pleasing to the eye. I also enjoyed the fact that the actors and set paralleled the play wonderfully” said Ed Wilson, a UML student, who attended the play with his Acting I class taught by Professor Paula Plum.

Play by Arthur Miller

Director: Charles Towers

Now Showing at Merrimack Repertory Theatre

http://www.merrimackrep.org. (978)454-3926

November 11 – December 12