Surrounded by a mountain of mementoes, nicely realised in Simon Higlett’s design, the sibling reunion is fraught with resentment but also shows the two men have been playing self-assigned roles. Walter is the brother who got out to enjoy a successful career as a wealthy surgeon. Victor, married to an alcohol-dependent wife, is a New York cop who sacrificed his studies to look after a dad ruined by the Great Depression. What we now see are two long-estranged brothers meeting to divide the family’s possessions. If it is, it has stood the test of time and now emerges, in Jonathan Church’s superbly acted production with David Suchet in the show-stealing role of an old furniture-dealer, as one of Miller’s best plays: an exploration of our need for sustaining illusions because, as he himself wrote, the truth is too terrible to face.Īs in an Ibsen play, much of the real action has happened in the past. On its Broadway debut in 1968, Arthur Miller’s play was dubbed by one critic “a museum piece”.
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