Theatre in Review: A View From the Bridge (Lyceum Theatre)

	Phoebe Fox, Nicola Walker. Photo: Jan Versweyveld

Having received acclaimed Broadway stagings in 1997 and 2010, A View From the Bridge wasn't really at the top of anyone's must-revive list, but Ivo Van Hove's production for London's Young Vic has arrived on a tidal wave of acclaim, earning additional rave notices from the New York press. And, in truth, it is almost certainly unlike any production of Arthur Miller's tragedy you may have seen. Whether or not this is a good thing is a matter for debate.

Van Hove's method involves stripping back a production as far as possible and focusing only the text, thus avoiding any calcified ideas or staging traditions that may have accrued to it over the years. In the case of A View From the Bridge, he has purposefully done away with any hint of naturalism. The set, by his longtime partner, Jan Versweyveld, is basically a white deck surrounded on three sides by benches. As you enter the theatre, the space is obscured by a black cube that rises when the play begins. There is additional audience seating on stage, at left and right of the playing area. The actors wear contemporary clothing, by An D'Huys, that hints at the play's 1950s time frame. (The actors are barefoot throughout; I have no explanation for this.) From the beginning, the director's intention seems clear; he intends to impose a coolly formal style on Miller's tragedy of the Brooklyn docks, rendering its tormented soul in largely visual terms. "I think naturalism is the biggest misunderstanding in theatre because there is nothing naturalistic on stage," the director told American Theatre magazine. "Everything is artificial. So we removed that."

Whether A View From the Bridge was suffering inside a stylistic sarcophagus is open to question. The two previous revivals couldn't have been less like each other. As you probably know, the play tracks the destruction of Eddie Carbone, an Italian American dockworker who, much to the consternation of his wife, Bea, is rather too attached to his niece, Catherine. When Eddie and Bea provide temporary shelter for a couple of "submarines" -- illegal immigrants who are Bea's cousins from Italy -- the wheels of tragedy are set in motion. One of them, Rodolpho, falls hard and fast for Catherine, a fact that drives Eddie, in a desperate attempt to end their romance, to break the most inviolable of laws in his community. Michael Mayer's 1997 staging put the entire neighborhood on stage, emphasizing the gravity of Eddie's sin against the social code. Gregory Mosher's production, in 2010, took a more close-up view, focusing on how living in close quarters inflamed the tensions among the characters. Similarly, Anthony La Paglia, Mayer's star, gave an operatic performance filled with arias of rage and the lust for revenge. Liev Schreiber, Mosher's Eddie, imploded in full view, unable to deal with the truth of his feelings for Catherine.

At the Lyceum, Mark Strong's Eddie, bullet-headed, rough-voiced, his body made lean by years of backbreaking work, has a certain authority that crumbles as he insists, with bullheaded tenacity, that he has Catherine's best interests at heart. But Eddie is a troubled figure, haunted by a growing awareness that he harbors sexual feelings for his 17 -year-old niece, and also possibly an unspoken attraction to Rodolpho, which would explain why he harps on Rodolpho's supposed effeminacy and why, in the play's most shocking moment, he grabs the young man and forcibly kisses him on the lips. The more these unacceptable feelings threaten to invade his consciousness, the more furious (and terrified) Eddie becomes, as if by taking action, any action, his world could be restored and his demons bottled up and put back on the shelf. This terrible inner battle is largely absent from Strong's performance; even as Eddie's rage rises, it never seems to come from some dark corner of the soul. The actor commands our attention with his strong presence and powerful, insinuating voice, but he never earns one's pity or fear, even when he commits an act that will lead to his doom.

Nicola Walker's Bea is a tense, watchful presence, the fear in her eyes contradicting her tentative smile as she attempts to keep Eddie in line; she handles her first confrontation with Eddie with understated skill, packing a world of worry into a single question. ("When am I going to be a wife to you again?") Phoebe Fox vividly communicates Catherine's frustration at Eddie's attempts at shielding her from the outside world, but she also makes clear that Catherine is deeply attached to her uncle, and her anxiety and confusion are palpable when she is forced to make a choice between Eddie and Rodolpho. I dearly wish Van Hove hadn't directed Fox to greet Eddie by jumping into his arms and wrapping her legs around his waist; what is supposed to be a deep psychological secret is given the staging equivalent of a float in Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade -- but, again, it's the director's way to render an idea visually rather than letting us discover it through the dramatic action.

Rather more problematic is the director's decision that Russell Tovey and Michael Zegen, as the Italians, Rodolpho, and Marco, should speak without accents. (The almost entirely British cast speaks with American accents.) I can understand the desire to do away with artifice, but Rodolpho's dialogue especially, delivered without the accent, sounds almost ridiculously stilted. Tovey never begins to suggest the smiling, pleasure-loving immigrant who falls hard for the shiny surfaces and plenitude of life in America, and he evinces little or no sexual chemistry with Fox's Catherine -- all of which makes it hard to understand why Rodolpho gets under Eddie's skin as badly as he does. In what is surely the play's weakest passage, Eddie, Bea, Catherine, Rodolpho, and Marco sit around the house, making halting attempts at conversation; Van Hove stages it with lengthy pauses that slow the scene to a crawl, draining it of underlying tension. Similarly, the bit of business in which Marco humiliates Eddie by demonstrating his skill at picking up a chair with one leg, lacks the furious subtext that lends it so much meaning in other productions.

Michael Gould does fine work as Alfieri, the lawyer, who narrates the story and who tries, his patience running thin, to make Eddie see he has no legal standing to block Catherine's marriage to Rodolpho. Versweyveld's lighting makes use of tiny color and/or color temperature shifts to mark significant changes in the emotional weather. Tom Gibbons' sound design makes good use of "Drumming," by Steve Reich, to create a percussive undertone.

Van Hove's approach is most felt in the climax, when Eddie's crime is publicly exposed and revenge is taken; the director creates a blood-soaked tableau, backed by an opera aria, that is formally striking -- an art installation based on themes from A View From the Bridge. But by then it is clear that the director has built his own show on Miller's script. A View From the Bridge may have been written in a relatively conventional naturalistic style, but it teems with life -- ugly, vivid, and violent. Van Hove's staging freezes its emotions and arranges them into a sleek, minimalist tableau. You may very well enjoy it, but I hope that someday you get to see the play that Arthur Miller wrote. -- David Barbour