Review: Unusual Staging Intensifies Tony Winning A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE

A View from the Bridge/by Arthur Miller/directed by Ivo van Hove/Young Vic Production/Ahmanson Theatre/through October 16

I hate when one acoustical element in a theatrical production prevents me from thoroughly enjoying the play. In A View from the Bridge, the Young Vic production currently at the Ahmanson through October 16, my concern was regarding Frederick Weller playing Eddie Carbone. He's a fine actor, but for some reason, from the very top, his voice was not carrying adequately over the stage to the audience. I could not hear many of his line deliveries in the first several minutes, and I was straining to understand. Perhaps because of the shell-like structure surrounding the actors center stage? Other voices seemed dimmed as well, so this set may have caused the problem. For a while, I thought it was me, that I was going deaf, but after the performance other audience members voiced the same complaint. Other than that, I have mostly good things to report about this piece directed incisively by Ivo van Hove. It comes to LA from Broadway where it won last year's Tony Awards for Best Revival of a Play and Best Director of a Play.

Arthur Miller's observations of longshoremen in Brooklyn in the 1950s make you think of the raw, gritty film On the Waterfront. But in that film, it's about management destroying needy workers' chances to work; in Bridge, Miller writes about how the old school, limited views of one man Eddie Carbone tear his family apart. He refuses to accept change and people who are different. And at the same time, he is trapped, without fully understanding the effects of his feelings, in an obsessive longing for his wife's niece Catherine (Catherine Combs). Wife Beatrice (Andrus Nichols) no longer has sex with Eddie. She blames her husband's obsessions over the 17 year-old Catherine, an orphan who Eddie and Beatrice are raising. When two cousins arrive from Sicily to get work and stay confined in the apartment with the others, Catherine ends up falling in love with Rodolpho (Dave Register), the very different looking brother of Marco (Alex Esola). Marco is your traditional swarthy dark Sicilian, whereas Rodolpho is blond, fair, hardly typical. He is also into singing and wants a cultural experience to blossom from his visit to Brooklyn. Marco, on the other hand, is only there to work and to send money home to his loyal wife and children. Eddie becomes jealous of Catherine's attraction to Rodolpho and tries to stop a marriage between them, by calling immigration and reporting that Marco and Rodolpho entered the US illegally. As a result, they are thrown in jail, tensions build, and Marco, who had been grateful to Eddie for his hospitality, turns on him, declaring that Eddie has killed his children. Eddie's antagonism toward the two men leads to violent action and his own tragic demise.

Bridge is like a Greek tragedy. Alfieri (Thomas Jay Ryan), a lawyer to the Carbone family, serves as narrator of the story and with this intriguing staging by van Hove, actors sit on benches around the tiny central playing area when onstage and act like a Greek chorus to Eddie's ensuing conflict. They watch, reflect silently and react out loud ... and crowd around vehemently when the time is at hand. The tension created by the actors in this small space turns it into a powder keg. Emotions become fiercely intense and put you on the edge of your seat. Van Hove has also well established a series of long pauses and the beating of an offstage drum in one scene that really assist in intensifying the animosity between members of the family. It is nerve-wracking to watch. You laugh intermittently, not knowing what else to do. This production also plays without an intermission between acts, so as not to break the momentum.

The direction and acting of Bridge are awesome. The entire cast give terrific performances. No one stands out above any other. In spite of the problem hearing Weller, I can only add that as an actor his approach is ferociously on target throughout the two-hour piece. Appropriately, I hated his character but, like Alfieri, in his final speech, it is difficult not to at least recognize and attest to Eddie's determination to fight for his beliefs right to the end, regardless of their bad intentions.

One thing can be said about Arthur Miller as a playwright. Not only was he able to brilliantly define the human condition, but he keenly foresaw a future wracked with unending conflict. A View from the Bridge holds up in today's war-torn, crazy world better than ever.

www.centertheatregroup.org

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