Theatre
Review
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A View From The Bridge, by Arthur
Miller
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The first thing to strike you about this production is its utter beauty. It is rare that designers get first mention, especially in reviews, but Saul Radomsky and Jeanine Davies (as Designer and Lighting Designer respectively) must surely take significant credit for the impact of this production, recreating the look and feel of 1940s Brooklyn perfectly, allowing the play to speak for itself without the clumsy impediment of uncertain staging. And Miller's play is one which does need to speak for itself. Dealing with the complex themes of love, honour and betrayal, this could all too easily have become a tortured affair. Instead, the audience receives that which the name suggests: a view into the lives of those usually obscured to us, given with perfect clarity, and free from injected moral aphorisms. |
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| The story centers around the house of Eddie (Robert Gwilym), a working man, husband to Beatrice (Sorcha Cusack) and guardian of orphaned niece Catherine (Katherine Holme). Eddie is a man who prides himself on his name, and the respect he garners from all those around him. However, following Catherine's offer of employment, and the arrival of two of Beatrice's cousins from Italy (Matthew Flynn and Tadeusz Pasternak as illegal immigrants Marco and Rodolpho), Eddie's role as master of all he surveys is continually questioned. With tragic predictability, Eddie's alpha-male status, both inside and outside the family, disintegrates at his touch, as we in turn become progressively aware of the obsessive love he feels for Catherine. The holding - and denial - of which casts him as the author of his own destruction. | |
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Amongst the cast accents were occasionally distracting, although in general these improved as the action was settled into. As the focus of the play Robert Gwilym has the most difficult of tasks, and whilst his performance was entirely engaging he is perhaps a little too much of a 'nice guy' to play the ill-fated Eddie with continued conviction, a fact not aided by the difficulties of a Brooklyn accent. Occasionally let down by uncertain extras and incongruously-barking dogs, the spell of the play fell loose at times. Yet these are on the whole minor complaints, for the company works comfortably together, with highlights coming especially in one-on-one encounters, such as the touching scene between the all-too-knowing wife Beatrice, and the trusting and naïve child that is Catherine. Throughout, the production (skilful directed by Kenny Ireland) is a captivating one; at turns funny, thought-provoking, and deeply tragic - indeed, 'A View From the Bridge' has about it the feel of the classic Greek tragedies. Events move steadily towards a seemingly unchangeable future, as the narrator notes with hopeless resignation that there is "too much love..." and asks, "what other way can it end?". The ending is not, in fact, entirely predictable; yet it is entirely fitting. In this patriarchal struggle, indeed, "only God makes Justice." Rebecca Smith |