Review: Hinta
Price challenges you to think about life values
Arthur Miller’s 50-year-old play The Price is startlingly topical. The play delves into the basic questions of life; the need to be loved and appreciated.
The Price, which opened the spring season on the small stage of the Helsinki City Theatre, is an intense drama that challenges the viewer to reflect on, or at least reflect, on their own life choices and the values behind them.
The setting of the play is an attic full of furniture that has been printed into oblivion and has to be emptied due to a demolition sentence. Victor Franz (Santeri Kinnunen) has invited Gregory Solomon (Esko Salminen), a dealer of old goods, to assess and buy the movables. Victor’s wife Esther (Aino Seppo) and brother Walter (Eero Aho) are also present. The brothers have not seen each other since their father died 16 years ago.
The play seemingly revolves around the old furniture in the attic, but the jumble of furniture piles is like a reflection of the souls of the main characters, each of whom is more or less confused and lost.
Arthur Miller’s play has stood the test of time excellently. If the play did not talk about years, such as the stock market crash of 1929, the text and events could be imagined to describe this time.
Santeri Kinnunen plays perhaps one of his best roles as the conscientious Victor, who has suppressed his emotions. Aino Seppo’s Esther remains a little thin, but Seppo perfectly captures the pain and frustration of a woman who has escaped to a moment of relief, adapted to life’s disappointments. Eero Aho’s successful Walter, who has experienced divorce and burnout, hovers in the middle ground between good and evil, sensitive and hard, so genuine that it is easy to find similarities for the character with real-life characters. Kinnunen and Aho poignantly interpret the tensions between siblings, where the web of hopes, disappointments, misunderstandings and lies eventually becomes a web that is almost impossible to break free from.
The most fascinating character in the play is Esko Salminen’s somewhat mysterious merchant Solomon. The 89-year-old Jewish merchant, who has seen life, has dared to live a life that looks like him and has maintained his passion for trading. Salminen takes over the stage sovereignly and makes the audience watch a couple of minutes of silent egg-peeling, almost holding their breath.
The end of the play is also as realistic as life; Often only fairy tales have a happy ending and people settle for some kind of compromises in life.
Arthur Miller’s play text shouts questions into the audience between lines: what kind of values guide your life choices? Are you satisfied with the compromises in your own life? What’s stopping you from being happy?