Last week’s well-managed presentation of A View from the Bridge from student company Broken Lyre Productions demonstrated, once again, the power of a play with a claim to be considered one of Arthur Miller’s finest.
The gripping family drama has about it much of the impact of a Greek tragedy, a comparison that Miller clearly invited in his use of a chorus-like narrator, the lawyer Alfieri (Ed Barr-Sim).
Here, too, we see characters propelled towards a disaster that can be foreseen but not avoided — the inevitable consequences of who they are and what they feel.
At the centre of the action is the tortured figure of New York longshoreman Eddie Carbone (Barney White). A childless married man, he nurses a passion— though he will not admit it to be such — for his orphaned niece Catherine (Marie Findlay) who shares his home.
Trouble erupts when he agrees to give accommodation to two cousins of his wife Beatrice (Lauren Hyett), illegal immigrants both. While the elder, Marco (Joseph Allan) is working hard to support his wife and three children back in Italy, young Rodolpho (Peter Huhne) is more free and easy. His plan for a long-term future in America is one in which Catherine also figures...
The simmering passions in the play were all too clearly shown in this competently acted production, which was directed by Becca Kinder and benefited from a versatile set expertly designed by Rachel Beaconsfield Press.
True, there were some problems over casting. Excellent though Barney White was, his Eddie was clearly too young to convey the outrageous nature of his love for Catherine. Mr Allen’s Marco, meanwhile, was some distance physically from the mighty, muscular figure he is supposed to be.
Deficiencies in the costumes of some minor characters led to the impression that here was a Brooklyn peopled by significant numbers of English students.
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