Image show Dominic West as Eddie and Kate Fleetwood as Beatrice in A View From The Bridge. Credits: Johan Persson
Ustinov Studio until Saturday 16 March
When Arthur Miller’s 1956 drama A View from the Bridge premiered at the New Watergate Theatre Club in London’s West End, audiences had to take out private club membership and sign a non-disclosure agreement before buying a ticket. Why? Because the Lord Chamberlain’s Office denied the play a license for public performance in order to protect the general public from “references to homosexuality.”
The bewildered Brigadiers, Lords, Lieutenant Colonels and Major-Generals on the Lord Chamberlain’s board deemed a scene where a male character forces a brutal kiss (aka an assault, in today’s parlance) on another male character, in an act of violence intended to assert authority, as a moral-corrupting bridge too far. Just that scene? Yes. Depictions of uber-macho/pathetically patriarchal behaviour leading to violent reprisals were apparently deemed wholly acceptable for public consumption – such was the hypocritical, sanctimonious social and political landscape when Miller published one of the darkest, most emotionally-complex plays in his entire canon.
Same play, different world – or is it? Director Lindsay Posner’s remarkable 2024 revival of A View from the Bridge remains as invigorating, relevant and powerfully challenging today as it was almost seven decades ago.
The Carbone family (dock-worker Eddie, his wife Beatrice and Beatrice’s late sister’s daughter Catherine) agree to host Beatrice’s impoverished Italian cousins in their tiny flat in Brooklyn, allowing them a grace period in which to settle in ‘the land of freedom’ – albeit, initially, illegally.
Respectful, conscientious Marco fits into the family fabric perfectly. His younger brother Rodolpho, however, is a different bollitore de pesci altogether: charmingly charismatic, innocently uninhibited and inherently entertaining. Little wonder, then, that Catherine – whom Eddie has protected in a claustrophobic gilded cage all her life – is instantly smitten… and Eddie is forced to confront his own iniquitous yearnings.
Much of the drama is narrated by benevolent Italian-American lawyer Alfieri (Martin Marquez) who dips in and out of various scenes in real time, offering advice to Eddie in much the same way as a priest might have done in 1950s Italian-American communities, or a family therapist may do in our world, today. And if any family needs help, it’s the Carbones.
Brooding, conflicted, repressed, tormented, impassioned: Dominic West’s command of Eddie as the dominant character has less to do with the presence of an extremely well-known actor taking to the tiny Ustinov stage and much more to do with West’s indisputable self-assurance and equanimity in bringing a notoriously complex character to intoxicatingly authentic life. He offers an immensely powerful portrayal of an ostensibly decent family man waging a personal war with his own warped sense of what being ‘masculine’ means: one minute, he’s a textbook depiction of overtly macho misogyny; at other times, his stifled vulnerability might move you to tears.
Pierro Niel-Mee as Marco and Callum Scott Howells as Rodolpho in A View From The Bridge. Credit: Johan Persson
As Catherine, Nia Towle is a Stockholm Syndrome victim personified, empathising with Eddie when she should really be loathing him, loathing him when the people around him feel empathy for his twisted state of mind, confusing the boundaries between very grown up flirtatiousness and childlike, innocent affection at every turn.
Caught in the struggle between the two, Kate Fleetwood’s Beatrice is as conflicted as Eddie, urging Catherine to fight for her freedom while desperately trying to come to terms with the fact that her husband’s warped love for her niece has destroyed all prospects of a once-happy marriage ever returning to normal, even if Catherine manages to fly the nest.
In the middle of this twisted web, it would almost be easy, in the hands of lesser director and a not-so-accomplished cast, for the Italian cousins to disappear into supporting roles, present only to highlight the Carbone family’s dysfunctional codependencies. But as Marco, Pierro Niel-Mee makes the importance of his presence felt, his deeply passionate, justice-fuelled character offering beautifully-balanced contrast to both Eddie’s alpha male dominance and Rodolpho’s confident, witty, thoroughly modern blond ambition (a stellar performance from Callum Scott Howells).
Not a word, pause or gesture is superfluous as we tear along to the denouement of a drama that has tragedy written all over it even from the optimistic opening scenes. By the time the American Dream is smashed to smithereens all over the Ustinov stage, we’re questioning our own perspectives on family life, cultural heritage, relationships, what it means to a man, what it means to be a woman… and what it means to be human.
But does once ‘controversial’ scene still pack that punch? Indeed – and it tells us more about just how toxic toxic-masculinity can get, in 30 seconds, than David Fincher’s Fight Club attempted to do in 140 minutes, 43 years later.
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