Arthur Miller’s The Price (1968) is incisive, humorous, surprising, and psychologically penetrating. So why have the critics been so bored with it for so many years? Leafing through the notices for the transfixing new production (at the American Airlines Theatre through May 14), I noticed that the reviewers couldn’t quite come up with a reason, at least not one that made any sense. One writer noted dismissively that the play is no Death of a Salesman though it at least made a few digs at capitalism—a few too few, evidently. Another, in the Times, said that the play was always “a little bit out of style,” and this last comment is a revealing one. The Price (unlike Miller’s best-known efforts) doesn’t give today’s critic what he really wants, which is billboard-sized neon messaging on one of the preferred themes of our era: the evils of conservatism, racism, religion, homophobia, war, or capitalism. Plays that strike one of these gongs may be contrived, belabored, mawkish, disingenuous, or flat-out nonsensical, and the critic will seldom register an objection. Any serious play that fails at least to take a swing at one of the approved scourges seems somehow trifling, disappointing, like a pop musician who refuses to play his greatest hits at the concert. Viewers of The Price are forced to consider the complexities of the play’s two brothers as individuals rather than as symbols of the greater progressive struggle.

For half a century The Pricehas been