THE PRICE Marylebone Theatre

ETHICS AND EVASIONS It’s a cluttered upper room, overcrowded with grand old furniture, a gramophone, harp, oddities like fencing foils and a home-built valve radio. The sense is of heavy old-fashioned prosperity worn to junk. It’s sixteen years since the old man died, ruined in the 1936 crash, but nothing has been moved or sold. Now in 1968 his two sons need to clear it as the building is demolished. Vic’s in charge: Elliot Cowan looking resignedly weary, still in police uniform as he pulls down dusty sheets, looks around in memory and winces at his wife Esther’’s belief that this sale might produce enough money for a new life where his low-grade NYPD job won’t embarrass and bore her. The dealer Mr Solomon arrives, rising from the stairwell beneath a black hat and puffing “another couple steps, I’d be in heaven!” . It is Henry Goodman. We know we’re safe. Frankly, it takes no more than a couple of shrugging “What can you do?”s to get devoted Goodman fans like me willing to accept any…