A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE
A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE
Reviewed by Jeffrey R Smith of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle
The Off Broadway West Theatre Company is currently presenting A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE by Arthur Miller.
As the Zen practitioners are wont to say, "You can never stick your foot into the same river twice," so too is it with live theatre, "You can never see the same play twice."
While you may have seen A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE sometime between its inception in 1955 and the present, "you ain't seen nothing" as the Brooklynese would say, until you witness the stunning performance of Richard Harder as he unfurls the tragic fate of Eddie Carbone: a man accelerating in a descending spiral of madness, anger, jealousy and self-destruction.
Eddie Carbone is a longshoreman in what Arthur Miller referred to as a "polis:" a poor area of New York where all the denizens are in the same situation.
In the case of Red Hook, the "polis" is section of Brooklyn nearly under the Brooklyn Bridge; men are dock workers and women stay at home wives; the social frabric is so strong, it is woven with neither cotton nor linen but ropes and cables; and honor is enforced with vendettas and stillettos—and not the stillettos the women wear either.
To digress historically: Sicily circa 1091, was unwitting host to its liberators: the Normans: who lifted from it the Muslim yoke.
During the Norman period, Sicilians developed a tradition of clandestine local self-government and justice of the people, while beneath an alien political umbrella.
Such was the socio-political tradition, the customs and unwritten laws, imported to the "polis" i.e. Eddie Carbone's Red Hook.
Having heard the basic story of A VIEW directly from a Sicilian longshoreman, Arthur Miller fleshed it out with details, characters and psychological drama.
His lead character, Eddie Carbone, constructed a life from a dream and hard work, amid the corrupt docks of Brooklyn.
Given the challenges of life on the docks, Eddie was a hero just to provide himself and his wife Beatrice with food on the table and a roof over thier heads.
His magnaminity extends to provide his orphaned niece, Catherine, with a home and a vocational education.
Like every mortal, especially men, Eddie has feet of clay: he is conflicted.
His love for his niece has departed from the advuncular, and while he knows he cannot have Catherine, neither can he give her up to an other man.
Catherine develops an attraction to her Aunt Beatrice's cousin, Rodolpho: an illegal immigrant hiding within Eddie's home along with his older brother Marco; it is here that Eddie starts to unwravel.
This is where we see the real genius of director Peter Tripp and the acting talent of Richard Harder spring to life.
Tripp, whose stage experience goes back to 1958 at Alameda High School, trots Eddie's inner madness up to the surface.
Harder's Eddie is transparent: the audience can see the whirling agonizing gears of Eddie's convoluted jealous mind trying to achieve the impossible: brutally manipulating his family and friends in a desperate attempt to retain that which he selfishly wants to possess: Catherine: his Galatea.
Alfieri, played superbly by Randy Hurst, is ostensibly a lawyer serving the Red Hook polis; functionally speaking he is both a psychologist and family therapist to Eddie, a presaging narator to the audience and, in the classical structure of Greek tragedy, the chorus who points out the inevitability of Eddie's fate.
The conflict of Eddie's self-will in opposition to nature and to the will of the community, is apparent to Alfieri who generously describes Eddie as a "self-interested man."
Although he tries to mask his motives, Eddie's actions within the play are solely prompted by his inner desires.
As a social being, humans must act halfway to preserve the rules of the community and lives of others while somehow placating their own desires and achieving their own dreams.
Given that Eddie's desires are impossible: Eddie is forced to act without unrestraint and without inhibition.
To his credit Richard Harder rises to the force and subtlety demanded by his character: Eddie's selfishness is conspicuous to everyone but his own oblivious self; his transmission of this paradox to the audience is real stagecraft and most noteworthy.
Eddie's tragic flaw is his self-interest; it manifests itself initially as a heroic man's healthy struggle to carve out an existence along the Brooklyn waterfront: his determination is a strength and yet it becomes a flaw: it is admirable, alarming and ultimately destructive when insubordinate to nature.
A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE is a metaphor for our times, it is about letting go of what we cannot possess.
For tickets to this American classic visit the Off Broadway West website at:
http://www.offbroadwaywest.org
or call the box office at 1-800-838-3006.