Use the form below to search for tickets on your desired date. Dates from
Synopsis Classic tale of love, ambition and revenge. Set amid Brooklyn's Italian-American community. Eddie and Beatrice have raised niece Catherine as their only precious daughter. She is almost 16 when two cousins arrive illegally from Sicily, seeking work and shelter and jeopardising all their dreams. This powerful modern classic will have you gripped as the hero Eddie grapples with his feelings towards the two women in his life, surviving in the shadow of the famous bridge in 1950s New York.
Lindsay Posner's revival of Arthur Miller's A View From the Bridge opened at the Duke of York's last week (5 February, previews from 22 January), with Ken Stott leading the cast as the man putting the blue in blue collar, Eddie Carbone.
In Miller's 1955 play, which hasn't been seen in the West End since 1995, Carbone, a head-strong longshoreman, is protectively raising his wife's orphaned niece, Catherine. But when Eddie's feelings for Catherine develop from paternal protectiveness to sexual desire, his struggle to contain his emotions leads him on a path of self destruction transforming him from a respected, honourable man to a virtual stranger shamed and broken by his own actions.
Many critics referenced Alan Ayckbourn's acclaimed 1989 National Theatre revival, which starred Michael Gambon, for comparative purposes. And most concluded that Stott's “wonderfully compelling” portrayal of Carbone was at least the match of Gambon's. There were some detractors who criticised the scope and pace of Posner's production, but they failed to rain on Stott's parade. And there was no shortage of superlatives for his fellow cast members, particularly the “excellent” Mastrantonio and “vivacious” Atwell. All in all, this wasn't a Bridge too far...
Michael Coveney on Whatsonstage.com (four stars) - “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 … 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.”
Benedict Nightingale in The Times(five stars) - “Lindsay Posner’s fine revival goes far towards convincing me that Miller was right to believe that he had written a tragedy, complete with a flawed protagonist, a sense of inevitability and a mini-chorus in the form of Allan Corduner’s Brooklyn lawyer, who describes Eddie walking 'step after step' towards disaster … Eddie’s own case is the most fascinating, because he refuses to know what he indeed knows. And you can see in him the growing unease, the terrible tension, the grief, the gathering anger, the suppressed madness and, finally, an awful implacability as, his face a mask, he phones the authorities. Better than Gambon? If not, very, very good.”
Michael Billington in the Guardian (three stars) - “One should live in the present, not the past. But, while one watches Lindsay Posner's perfectly decent production of this Arthur Miller classic, it is difficult to banish the memory of Alan Ayckbourn's sensational 1987 revival. The difference is that Posner treats the play as the tragedy of a doomed individual, whereas Ayckbourn … in addition gave us a portrait of a community … There are many fine moments in Stott's performance … I just wish there more hint of the sub-text, which is that Eddie, who says of Rodolfo 'you could kiss him he is so sweet', is himself secretly drawn to the vivacious visitor.”
Quentin Letts in the Daily Mail(four stars) - “Ken Stott has a voice as deep as Loch Ness, a plump tum and a face as lived-in as that old woman's shoe from the nursery rhyme. Glamorous matinee idol, he ain't. But he showed this week that on his day, he is as powerful a stage actor as any of his generation … Lindsay Posner draws a strong ensemble performance from his cast, Miss Atwell giving Catherine a hesitant flirtatiousness ... Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio is also excellent as Eddie's despairing wife … Some teenage schoolgirls in the auditorium on Wednesday behaved poorly, giggling at the wrong moments and spoiling the dramatic tension. Mr Stott's top-flight acting, vaulting from indulgent uncle to bewildered, despairing treachery, demands greater respect than that.”
Nicholas de Jongh in the Evening Standard (five stars) - “Christopher Oram’s imaginative design captures the play’s claustrophobic, nightmare quality by allowing us to see both the peeling exterior of the family home and its shabby interior. In this cramped environment, Stott puts on a mesmerising display. Like a seething bull at bay, he radiates an all-round aggression. It shows in his accusing stare, the rasp of his voice and in the kiss he plants first on his niece’s lips and then on Rodolpho’s, in mockery of the boy’s maleness … The impassioned distress of Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio’s wife and Atwell’s agonised embarrassment runs counter to Stott’s fury and gives the evening its shocking, emotional dynamic: family life rent asunder.”
Charles Spencer in the Daily Telegraph- “A View from the Bridge … is a classic case of a writer not realising that less can mean more. Mind you Lindsay Posner's surprisingly clunky production, with cumbersome designs by the usually excellent Christopher Oram, doesn't help. There are too many occasions when the production plods rather than grips. Nevertheless Ken Stott is often wonderfully compelling as Carbone … There's strong support from Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio as his pinched and miserable wife and from Hayley Atwell who has a lovely bloom of youth and the lovelight in her eye as the niece. Meanwhile poor Allan Corduner does what he can with that tiresome lawyer. It's an often impressive evening – but not quite the dramatic knockout that I'd been hoping for.”
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
Opened 10 Sep 1892 as the Trafalgar Square Theatre,name changed in 1895. Major refurbishment 79/80. Taken over by the Royal Court during their two year refurbishment starting in 1996, called the Royal Court downstairs. 650 seats. Society of London Theatre member. An [ATG] member.
Whatsonstage.com - Discount London theatre tickets, theatre news and reviews, Theatre videos, Theatre discussion, National Theatre Listings. Covering London's West End, all of Theatreland and all UK theatre. The best
for London Theatre Ticket Discounts.
