THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
By Arthur Miller
Marylebone Theatre, Rudolf Steiner House, 35 Park Road, London, NW1 6XT until June 7, 2026
Being a long-time fan of Henry Goodman, I’ve been waiting for him to be cast as the wily old furniture dealer in Arthur Miller’s great drama. Having seen Alan MacNaughton, Warren Mitchell and David Suchet triumph in the part I always thought he too had a great Soloman in him. Well, the moment has arrived and... it’s a triumph.
The play, unfairly, is much underappreciated and performed less often than Miller’s more ‘worthy’ titles. It’s firmly set in a now vanished ‘60s New York but like the greatest art it is universal in its exploration of family legacy and the price paid for bonds of duty. Like much of Miller the scars of the Great Depression and its toll on families hangs over the play like a cloud. It’s another exploration of the tarnished American Dream, and just like Franz family here, Miller’s own father was wiped out, in every sense, by the Wall St Crash.
On the eve of selling their late father’s possessions, two estranged brothers, Victor (Elliot Cowan) a regular New York cop, and Walter (John Hopkins), now a wealthy doctor, meet in the cluttered attic of their old home for the first time in many years. Victor’s wife Esther (Faye Castelow) also appears. What begins as a simple transaction between Victor and an ancient furniture dealer/appraiser Gregory Solomon (Henry Goodman), who has arrived to clear the place, inflates into a fierce emotional reckoning, as decades of resentment, sacrifice and buried truths between the brothers erupt into the open.
The play has two distinct parts – the first is lighter as the wily, 89-year-old furniture dealer tries to work the price down. The second, darker, half is like a chunk of O’Neill. Walter arrives being all munificent and offering Victor an alternative financial arrangement, partly an olive branch, partly a guilt payment. This just further stokes Victor’s anger about his own self-sacrifice, staying behind to care for the ailing father when Walter fled to college.
The second act sags a little, with some repetitive dialogue but it’s one of the great confrontations in modern drama and director Jonathan Munby bridges this tonal shift with great finesse.
Victor of course is not just fighting his brother but his whole sense of self, which as the play progresses gets stripped away. He’s also being barraged by Esther’s constant disparagement. Ambitious and unhappy in her lot Castelow’s Esther is a coiled spring of anger, dripping in resentment over years of postponed gratification because of their finances.
Cowan and Hopkins make very convincing brothers, bringing great depth to their roles, but the play belongs to Goodman. Commenting, not always helpfully, on the latest family crisis he’s witnessing, his Solomon is a spritely mix of kvetching, sardonic humor, wisdom and connivance. It’s a part that could easily fall into caricature, but Goodman draws out the many shades in him. It’s informed by vaudeville (there’s a great moment when seemingly tired of the bargaining he produces a hard-boiled egg which he peels, complaining he’s got hungry.
Solomon explains how he was an acrobat who had fled Russian pogroms, spent time in the Royal Navy, survived four marriages, bankruptcies and the suicide of a beloved daughter but all the while remaining a life force.
Last, but not least, the other character in the play really is Jon Bausor’s gloriously detailed, canyon like, set. The sense of claustrophobia generated by this cluttered and dusty attic neatly mirrors how these characters are still burdened with the emotional weight of the past. The details are beautiful – huge Edwardian armoires, a grand dining table, chairs, status symbols such as a fencing set or the mother’s harp – now with a cracked sounding board. Max Pappenheim’s music and sound design, too, further enhance the mood giving the piece a filmic quality.
The reckoning at the end, and its huge emotional impact on the audience (“we invent ourselves to wipe out who we know”), is testament to this play’s claim to also be a masterpiece itself.
