Arthur Miller, in this, the celebratory season of his 100th birthday, is having a banner year, with productions of his major and minor works popping up all over the place. From the first group we have A View From The Bridge, in a vivid and daring production from the Young Vic in Britain, brought to us by a consortium of altruistic American producers, a group consisting of Scott Rudin, Roger Berlind, Daryl Roth, John Gore, the Lincoln Center Theatre, and other visionaries, and the Broadway season is brightened by their largesse.
A cast of seven marvelous British actors, none of whom are known here, under the direction of Ivo Van Hove, has tackled this very New York (actually Brooklyn) story, and come up with an authentic all American tragedy that is stunning. Mr. Van Hove is making his Broadway debut with this memorable concept of his. As General Director of Holland’s leading theatre company (Toneelgroep Amsterdam) he has staged dozens of major plays, many of them in New York at the New York Theatre Workshop and at BAM in Brooklyn. He brings an original and often controversial vision to each project.
I was more disturbed than fascinated with his approach to Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes at the Workshop space. But with this beautifully wrought Miller play, he made a daring decision to strip the piece down to its core and has produced a visceral version of this scary tale of a longshoreman working the docks in Red Hook Brooklyn, who is forced by circumstance to confront his obsession with his ward, his niece Catherine, a beautiful 18 year-old orphan whom he has looked after since her birth.
To bring full focus to the Miller text Van Hove has eliminated all reality in the setting. The story plays itself out in the crowded Carbone family apartment, and in its surrounding streets near the docks. Replacing the more conventional theatrical setting, this version unfolds inside a lucite boxing ring, in which furniture, fixtures, even doors are missing. The concept goes all the way down; all the characters play even without shoes. Background music is used to elevate the earthy story to the level of the mythic.
Mark Strong makes a vivid impression as Eddie Carbone, the patriarch who is terrified of losing his niece to a young cousin of his wife, an attractive blonde Sicilian who arrives with his brother to illegally stay in the Carbone apartment until they can earn money to send back home, where there are no jobs. He is strongly supported by Nicola Walker as his wife, by Phoebe Fox as his niece, and Russell Tovey as the catalyst from Sicily whose appearance brings the plot to a boil. Michael Gould, as his friend and attorney, offers useful comment as narrator. Tension builds throughout the 115 minute play, as it unwinds in one act, played without intermission.
“Absorbing” is too mild a word to describe our reaction to it. It’s an extraordinary achievement and remained fascinating as it reached its inevitable conclusion. There is one scene late in the play in which the director is anxious for us to realize the awkwardness in the household, and he uses a sound device combined with long pauses to achieve it. I regret that the word “artsy” crossed my mind, for it seemed we didn’t need the directorial touch to lend the scene what he wanted us to bring to it.I had completely bought into this bare-as-bones approach to a beautifully crafted script by an imaginative director and my thoughts on just these two bits of staging in no way diminished my enthusiasm for this remarkable achievement.
The audience, and that certainly included me, roared its approval when all was done. Any fan of live theatre who sees A View From the Bridge will remember it always.
Running Time: One hours and 55 minutes, with no intermission.
https://youtu.be/AGgq0CrAlOc
A View From the Bridge is playing through February 21, 2016 at The Lyceum Theatre –149 West 45th Street, in New York City. For tickets, buy them at the box office, call (212) 239-6200, or purchase them online.
