A View from the Bridge

The Old Fitz is so small it’s hard to imagine it as theatre in the round.  But stripped of all props except a chair, and with the actors when offstage sharing front row seats with the audience, it’s amazing what little you need to make great theatre.

A View from the Bridge, in this fine stripped back production by Iain Sinclair, is a view up close, more a psychological study.  Luckily the acting totally rewards the focus.

Driving the play is the seething resentment of Eddie Carbone (a dangerous Ivan Donato) at the growing independence of his adored teenage niece Catherine (a beautifully modulated Zoe Terakes). Feeding the tension is the anxiety of his wife, the love-starved Beatrice (Janine Watson), and then the arrival of two young Italian brothers desperate for American  opportunities, Marco (David Soncin) and the beguiling Rodolpho (Lincoln Younes).  Rodolfo’s winning, almost feminine ways with Catharine trigger Eddie’s explosive jealousy.

Giles Gartrell-Mills plays a mate who Eddie discards, along with his community and his honour, while David Lynch is the local lawyer who, as if to a jury, narrates Eddie’s downfall.

Clemence Williams’ sound, Matt Cox’s inventive lighting and Martelle Hunt’s appealing 1950’s working class costuming provide the only visceral sense of Arthur Miller’s vitally important outside world. 

Somehow though, this cast conjures the grinding Brooklyn waterfront and the cheap tenement housing which so oppresses these families and so shrinks their life options.  A compelling and sensitive ensemble work, this View from the Bridge is a must see.

Martin Portus