It is extraordinary that London is seeing Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge and Elia Kazan’s great movie On the Waterfront – in Steven Berkoff’s stage adaptation – opening within a week of each other in the same season. Both deal with life and betrayal among the New York longshoremen of the early 1950s in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge.
And both are great tragedies with classical, mythic dimensions. Miller’s tale is specifically about the Italian immigrant community in the slum of Red Hook where “the gullet of New York is swallowing the tonnage of the world.” And our guide is the philosophical lawyer Alfieri (beautifully played by Allan Corduner) who sets a tone of tragic inevitability from the outset.
His subject is Eddie Carbone, a longshoreman too much in love with his own niece who shops a pair of illegal immigrants to the police because one of them plans to marry the girl. Lindsay Posner’s production is perfectly pitched at this level of heightened realism, with a performance by Ken Stott as Eddie that erupts like a wounded bear from the shock of his own unleashed emotions.
I’ve sometimes found Miller’s play over portentous, but the tone is spot-on here, and we are treated to an evening of theatre as rich, satisfying and alarming as any in town at the moment.
The period detail is exact in the costumes and “feel” of the show, Adam Cork’s rumbling soundtrack of ship’s horns, gathering storms and street sounds combining with Christopher Oram’s monumental, peeling outer walls – rising majestically to reveal the cramped, brown varnish family apartment raised on jetty stilts – to frame a scenario of everyday struggle and fleeting happiness swamped in disaster.
Only the sightlines are a problem (bad design fault) with the upstage inset of the main acting area – make sure you sit in the middle of the stalls or circles. Stott’s Eddie – lurching like a drunken prize fighter in the scene where he kisses his niece (Hayley Atwell) and then her blond Sicilian lover boy Rodolpho (Harry Lloyd) full on the mouth – is a great wail of a performance, a Punch-nosed Pagliacci swollen with pain and confusion.
The fine American actress Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, last seen here in Grand Hotel at the Donmar, is a drained, loyally at-the-end-of-a-tether wife Beatrice and the large contributory cast includes Gerard Monaco as Marco, the other Sicilian who precipitates the show-down, and the aptly named Antonio Magro and Enzo Squillino Jr as Eddie’s friends and neighbours, shuffling between the docks and the bowling alley.
Typical - you wait years for a play about New York longshoremen and then two come along at once! Unlike Stephen Berkoff's expressionist On the Waterfront, Lindsay Posner's production is grim and naturalistic and all the better for it. Arthur Miller's play is rather predictable and moves inexorably to an inevitable conclusion (and Michael Billington's gay subtext is a figment of his imagination), but a superb ensemble create their own tension. Ken Stott is an actor seemingly permanently on the verge of a volcanic eruption making him a perfect Eddie Carbone and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio sacrifices all her natural glamour as his exhausted wife, loyal to the end. I thought Hayley Atwell was a very bland Major Barbara but here she is exceptional, naive and unknowingly flirtatious with a shattering spark of anger when she finally turns on Eddie. A View From the Bridge might not be quite in the same league as Miller's greatest work, but it is nevertheless an enjoyable slice of gritty Brooklyn life. - David Baxter
15 Apr 09
I meant 5 *s! - rds
13 Apr 09
Well fred I too saw Michael Gambon (was it really 20 years ago?) and he was fantastic too. Like Gambon, Ken Stott has that rare ability to be able to inhabit the characters he plays. Tonight he did this to perfection as Eddie. Miller crafted an extraordinary tale in A View From The Bridge, a tale encompassing youthful aspirations, lost love and, the big taboo, incest. Miller's skill in being able to deftly handle these sensitive subjects puts him into a league of his own. It was a stunning production with star turns from Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Eddie's overlooked wife Beatrice, Hayley Atwell a touchingly portrayed niece torn between her love for Eddie's father figure and her own awakening desires for Rudolfo, Harry Lloyd, the illegal immigrant her family are habouring and who fuels Eddie's mad jealousy. Finally, Allan Corduner, Alfieri the Brooklyn lawyer, makes an impressive narrator of this very Greek tragedy. I would not be at all surprised if it transfers to Broadway.
- rds
13 Apr 09
Brilliant, Ken Stott was fantastic, went with my 16 yr old daughter who is studying the play for GCSE, both of us were spellbound. - Carol
28 Mar 09
Superb production of a play that I thought I did not want to see again after Gambon's performance 20 years ago. Now Ken Stott and this production eclipse the earlier one in every respect. Stott's ability to inhabit his character and to evoke huge sympathy is astonishing. Truly great acting. He is supported by a wonderful cast. Unmissable. - fred
23 Mar 09
What A show! I thought the acting was 1st Class.
Stott is at his best in this role. Fantastic cast. - Joe Corden
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