We sat down for an exclusive interview with Elliot Cowan, who is playing Victor Franz in ‘The Price’.
‘The Price’ runs until 7th June at Marylebone Theatre- Tickets here
1. The Price is one of Arthur Miller’s most personal works. How did playing Victor reshape your view of life’s quiet compromises?
It’s clearly rooted in Arthur Miller’s own life, particularly the loss of his father’s business during the Wall Street crash, which echoes in the brothers’ story. But what interests me is not just the biography, it’s the structure of comparison. Two men with the same beginnings, who make different decisions, and only later discover what those decisions meant.
Playing Victor shifted something for me around how those decisions are experienced. At the time, they don’t feel like compromises. They feel coherent, even necessary. Victor gives up education to care for his father, becomes a policeman, builds a stable life. None of that feels like loss in the moment. It’s only when he stands opposite his brother, who pursued ambition and achieved visible success, that the question arises.
I’m at a similar point in life, approaching fifty, having spent decades in one profession. I chose acting early and never really questioned it. But over time, especially now, you become aware of the paths you didn’t take, and the narrowing effect of earlier decisions. The play doesn’t offer a clean answer, but it does suggest that those “big decisions” are often invisible when you make them. You only recognise them when the results start coming in, and by then you’re living inside them.
2. Victor is defined by duty and sacrifice. How do you balance making him both justified and tragic?
I don’t approach him as tragic, and I don’t think the play is a tragedy in the strict sense. It has elements of comedy, particularly in the marriage, which is under strain but ultimately survives. That structure is technically comic not tragic.
With Victor, the key is not to “balance” anything. If you try to add tragedy, you reduce him. He experiences himself as justified. His choices made sense to him, and in many ways still do. The tension comes when that logic is challenged, not by an external judgment, but by the presence of his brother and the life he represents.
There are aspects of Victor that are difficult, he can be resentful, passive-aggressive, even self-righteous. But those qualities sit alongside genuine sacrifice and loyalty. The play, and Miller is very clear about this, asks us not to judge either brother as simply right or wrong.
What I find more interesting is that Victor arrives at a kind of acceptance. He begins to see value in the life he has lived, even if it doesn’t match the dominant idea of success. That, to me, is not tragic. It’s quietly liberating.
3. How does the attic setting heighten the emotional tension between the two brothers?
The attic concentrates everything. It’s one space, in real time, with no escape. That alone creates pressure.
But it’s also a space filled with objects that carry memory. Every piece of furniture represents something unresolved, something held onto. So the past isn’t abstract, it’s physically present. The brothers aren’t just arguing about ideas, they’re surrounded by the material evidence of their shared history.
There’s also a structural pressure. The building is about to be demolished, the furniture has to be sold, a decision has to be made. So you have time compressing the action, and space containing it.
In that sense, the attic is both literal and symbolic. It’s where things are stored and forgotten, but also where they resurface. And once they do, there’s nowhere to put them back.
4. What draws you back to theatre for a piece like The Price, and how does your approach differ from screen work?
Theatre gives you continuity. You carry a character through the entire arc in real time, in front of an audience. That demands a different kind of responsibility. You can’t correct or adjust later, you live with the consequences of your choices as the performance unfolds.
On screen, you’re working in fragments. You might only need to deliver ten seconds of truth at a time, and those pieces are assembled later. That requires precision and focus, but it’s a different relationship to the material.
What theatre offers, especially over a run, is repetition. And repetition builds freedom. You become so familiar with the structure that you can start to let go inside it. The work becomes less about managing nerves or hitting marks, and more about being responsive in the moment.
I find that process recalibrates me. It brings me back to the fundamentals of voice, body, and attention in a way that’s harder to access on set.
5. How did you and your co-star build a believable shared history between Victor and Walter?
You don’t build a single shared history, you build two interpretations of the same events.
Victor and Walter don’t agree on what happened between them. That’s where the tension comes from. So the work is to be very clear about what your character believes, and allow those beliefs to conflict.
Practically, it starts with trust. You establish boundaries around physical and emotional contact, so that you can work freely without second-guessing. Then you look at the text in detail, what’s said, what’s avoided, what’s contradicted.
From there, it becomes more instinctive. You bring your own experience of relationships, of family, of conflict, and allow that to inform the interaction. Over time, the history starts to feel less constructed and more lived, because it’s being tested in real time between you.
6. What do you hope audiences take away from Victor’s story today?
I’m less interested in what they “take away” and more in what the play asks of them.
What’s striking is how current it feels. Victor’s suspicion of systems, of a version of success that prioritises winning above all else, lands very clearly now. There’s a pressure in the world towards visible achievement, financial dominance, and constant advancement.
Victor challenges that, not through argument, but through his existence. He represents a different set of values, duty, care, modesty, which are often dismissed as failure in that framework.
If the play works, the audience doesn’t settle on one brother as right. They move between them, recognising something in both. And that creates a more uncomfortable question, which is how they themselves measure a life. What counts as success, and at what cost.
If that question stays with them, the play has done its job.