A View from the Bridge

A psychological tour de force, Lindsay Posner’s West End transfer of A View from the Bridge blends the oxymoronic notions of American individualism within the McCarthyism that typifies Miller’s work.

The corruptive influence of Senator Joe McCarthy’s Un-American Activities Committee is made especially clear, drawing national suspicion into the household with near cannibalistic results.

Eddie Carbone (Ken Stott) and wife Beatrice (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) are working-class examples of how the American Dream can stretch only so far. Eddie’s unreasonable fear of allowing his niece Catherine (Hayley Atwell) to become her own woman in a paranoid and dangerous America is near illicit, driving a wedge between him and his family and pushing the increasingly desperate man towards an inexorable conclusion. The arrival of two Italian illegal immigrants to the Carbone household proves to be fatal.

It is no small coincidence that the play features all the hallmarks of a great tragedy. The moral code of Miller’s Brooklyn falls somewhere between the New York of today and the dog-eat-dog world of ancient Rome, the immigrants’ homeland. Alfieri (Allan Corduner), Eddie’s Brooklyn lawyer and the near omniscient narrative voice of the piece, is the play’s one man Greek chorus, knowingly tracking the inevitable downfall of Miller’s flawed protagonist.

Given the severity of the topic, Posner’s production is notably more humorous than audience members may expect. Early scenes capturing a sense of familial community are at times poignant and moving, though admittedly they become suitably less so as their motivations are deftly uncovered. What simmers in the first half is brought brutally to the boil in the second. The last ten minutes are arguably amongst the finest that Miller ever wrote.

Ken Stott’s performance of the self destructive longshoreman, Eddie Carbone, is delicate and well observed, convincingly portraying a tribal code of honour which shrouds his dangerous jealousy and treachery. The grit of his Edinburgh accent lends itself surprisingly well to that of a frustrated, overworked Brooklyn docker. Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio finds a tragic humour as sexually neglected wife Beatrice, subtlety capturing a wonderful neurosis in the character but never allowing her portrayal to descend into unbelievable eccentricity.

Christopher Oram's set design is luscious though understated; a true product of West End drama. The dated décor and the cracks in the walls of the high-ceilinged Brooklyn apartment are a perfect symbol of Ken Stott’s ultimately tragic portrayal of Eddie Carbone: he is a man ruled, albeit superficially, by tradition, who cracks like plaster on a tenement wall at the threat of change and upheaval.