(seen at the press night performance on 23rd April 2026, by invitation)
A programme note states that the Guardian newspaper thinks the Marylebone Theatre has, “National Theatre-level production values.” They are wrong. Marylebone’s are currently higher.
From casting, to Jon Bausor’s perfect cluttered attic apartment set, to Jonathan Munby’s lively – detailed yet unfinicky – direction, this is the National Theatre ‘pre-covid’ era. And you can add far comfier front row seats to the list.
You wonder what ‘Licenced Appraiser’ Gregory Solomon (Henry Goodman) would offer on them. It would be unchanged from the moment he arrives, but would he ever tell us amid a steady flow of incredulous anecdotes and homilies?
Solomon is 89, an old firehorse responding to the bell one last time. Lured out of retirement to quote for emptying loft rooms of furniture, bought in happier financial days by the parents of Victor and Walter Franz.
Goodman’s first act performance is remarkable. Long monologues, seemingly bumbling ramblings… and a little shtick with an egg that justifies the ticket alone.
With a few short lines in the second act, he elevates both performance and play to quite dizzying heights, but this is no one-man show.
Elliot Cowan (Victor) matches Goodman line-for-line. Scientific ambitions thwarted, this New York cop is considering retirement at 50, not a moment too soon for wife Esther (Faye Castelow).
The tempering of Cowan’s Victor is heightened by every exchange. The ripples left by heating and cooling of his emotions and life challenges. The estrangement from brother Walter (John Hopkins), bubbles destroying irreparably the surface of the cast man.
Castelow’s Esther both clings to and shuns this bronze of a husband. Victor’s stoicism is her strength, his immovability a frustration she vacillates between accepting and wishing to leave.
Holding the stage with a mixture of confusion and powerfully clear insights; as Solomon notes, her outfit delights. The vivid colour and sharp cut an accurate summary of personality and performance.
If the first half is negotiation over the price of furniture, the second is about the price of life.
Walter Franz (John Hopkins) enters as the curtain falls on act one, and is in the same position at the start of act two.
Revelations, confessions and unexpected truths pour from a man who may or may not have undergone a Damascene conversion. Hopkins swaps deliciously, often almost mid-sentence, between reconciliatory brother and bitter poisoner.
Between himself and Cowan, they enshrine the double meaning of Miller’s title. Enough to desiccate Victor, Cowan crumbling to dust… but does he? Wife and estate appraiser perhaps suggesting otherwise.
This is late mid-period Miller. He has experienced divorce and writes with open bitterness. Fewer characters than his biggest and best-known works allows him to explore far more deeply than usual familial relationships.
He can focus on just a pair of brothers, and the result is deeply satisfying. As relevant today as in 1968, perhaps more so in the judicious weighing of mere money against the value of a man’s life experience determined by it.
Equally, the Marylebone Theatre have produced a genuinely magnificent revival. Thanks to a London Underground strike, it took the monkey three times longer than usual to get home. No matter at all, this needs to be seen at any price.
5 stars.
Photo credit: Mark Senior, used by kind permission.