A View from the Bridge
By Arthur Miller
Directed by Lindsay Posner
Richmond Theatre
26th – 30th May

This is a real treat for regulars at Richmond Theatre; A View from the Bridge finishes its triumphant West End run with a short tour in the provinces and what a teat it is. Ken Stott as Eddie Carbone leaves nothing behind as he magnificently negotiates the highs and lows of life in 1940’s Red Hook.

There are many that would rank All My Sons 1947, Death of a Salesman 1948 or The Crucible 1953 as the greatest of Miller’s works, I would venture to disagree. Having established himself as a great playwright, Miller returned to an earlier work, originally it had been written in verse and set as a piece of Greek tragedy. Miller had lived and worked in Red Hook and had heard the story of a longshore man who had informed the immigration authorities on two family members that were illegal immigrants. Miller, himself an immigrant knew what it was to be a stranger in a new country, seeking a new and better life, indeed much of the growth America had been based upon such peoples. So Miller took Eddie as the central character, a man who wants the best for his family and yet cannot but follow his destiny and in doing so destroys himself. The play is wonderfully composed with a narrator giving a prologue and narrative to the play and the lines retaining that verse like structure and the inevitable tragedy slowly, but powerfully unfolding. Then Miller, in his maturity adds to this the jealousy of a man in love with a woman desired by others, an older man in love with a young beautiful woman. An insight perhaps of what it was like to be in love with Marilyn Monroe, to whom he was to marry and divorce in subsequent years, and the impotence that perhaps he felt within his own tragedy of his then current marriage to Mary Slattery. So this is Miller writing at his best about a time and a place that he had experienced and revealing much of himself and his own thoughts and pressures. You can double read into this piece Miller’s dealings with the House of Un-American activities, in part what was it to be an American and from where did these Americans come from. This is what I believe turns A View from the Bridge into a truly great piece and a masterpiece of American theatre. There are many parallels between this play and the film version of On The Waterfront, which was being made by a friend, Kazan at more or less the same time. Like that film, A View from the Bridge, is based upon true events and that in part is why so much of the play speaks to so many different audiences. The original play was itself beset with problems. It was Peter Brook that suggested he took the original one act and developed it, in doing so the verse had to change to prose, but the original rhythms remained. Then the Lord Chancellor would not allow two men to kiss on stage so the Comedy Theatre had to become a ‘club’. Lastly the actors Anthony Quayle, Mary Ure etc. invented their own version of Brooklynese.

Lindsay Posner directs this play so well and manages to get the right balance between the tortured soul of Eddie and the spurned, but loving Beatrice played by Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonia and the enchanting Catherine, representing the then new young of America, played by the delightful Hayley Atwell. Then counterpoised against that is Gerard Monaco as the cool and still, but purposeful and powerful Marco and the fanciful Rodolfo played by Harry Lloyd. Gerald Monaco puts in a remarkable performance, incredibly still on stage each word each, each movement, each slight gesture is aimed like a bullet fired by a sniper with deadly accuracy against Eddie. Then there is Allan Corduner as Alfieri who unfolds this tragic story in true Greek tragedy style. Again with remarkable coolness and dispassion he lays out the facts, he, Alfieri, being unable to alter the tragic course of the drama to the ending and to the simple choice of what to accept.

What a privilege it was to see this masterpiece of a play in such a masterful production.

Reviewed by Evan Rule