With the threat of a double-dip in the economy, it seems Obama’s ‘financial crisis responsibility fee’ isn’t the only thing worth importing from America. Many artists succumb to the creeping conservatism often a part of growing old, yet the only thing reserved in Arthur Miller’s undervalued 1968 effort is the Ibsenian dramatic technique; thematically, it’s a characteristically intelligent examination of an economic system that puts a price on people’s lives, and the ways in which we delude ourselves into avoiding the painful truth that results from it.

A quality production all-round, director John Dove preserves both the moral complexity of Miller’s superior writing and manages an excellent cast on top form.

On Michael Taylor’s evocative New York attack set are some remnants of wealth; a harp, some grandly cabinets and a cluster of once-valued junk. Victor (Greg Powrie), a middle-aged policeman, and his wife Esther (Sally Edwards) are there to sell everything to gruff antiques dealer Soloman (James Hayes). The effect of 1929 looms over the apartment and the characters lives, and Victor is caught up in remembering how he had to forego his dreams to look after his ill father. Soon enters Victor’s estranged brother Walter (Aden Gillet), who left the family to pursue his career, and soon buried feelings and resentments come to the fore.

A quality production all-round, director John Dove preserves both the moral complexity of Miller’s superior writing, which plays tennis with your sympathies, and manages an excellent cast on top form. Hayes is hugely entertaining as the nervy and talkative Soloman, while Powrie’s expertly slow-burning performance gets under the skin. The result is a very human examination of the political through the personal, as we feel the characters emotionally unburdening themselves of the myths they’ve created to help themselves live with their decisions, which in turn exposes the myths surrounding an economic system which puts unnatural pressure on human relationships by pitting them against our own survival.