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Seeing a trail of sorrow
A View from the Bridge
Belgrade Theatre, Coventry
***** THE Bridge in question is the Brooklyn
Bridge, by Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty, embodying the welcome
for the ‘Huddled Masses’ and delivering a daily eulogy for the American
Dream. But the bridge also overlooks Red Hook, the
poorest neighbourhood in New York, rich in Italians, and crusty with
crime; this is the American nightmare, deep in 1930s Depression and
blaming illegal immigration for its malaise. Hmmm. Eddie Carbone (Jonathan Guy Lewis) is
second-generation ‘hyphenated’ Italian-American and his wife Beatrice
(Teresa Banham) and he, with no children of their own, have taken in her
sister’s orphaned daughter Catherine (Daisy Boulton) to raise as their
own. They live in squalor but their big hearts also
welcome two Sicilian ‘submarines’, their word for illegal immigrants,
Marco (Philip Cairns) and Rudolfo (James Rastall), while they earn
enough to fend for themselves. Marco is strong and married with three children,
one of whom is dying of TB. Cathy is pretty and just 17. Rudolfo is
smart, blond, unusually handy in the kitchen, at making dresses and
sings like a bird. What’s not to like? Eddie, though, sees him
differently. The role of Greek Chorus to this Greek tragedy is
given to a lawyer Alfieri (Michael Brandon) to whom Eddie confides his
fears about Rudolfo and Cathy’s burgeoning romance. “He’s not right,” is
all he can manage. But Eddie’s deep-seated fears about Rudolfo, as
Alfieri tells the audience, will not have a good outcome: Beatrice
assumes Eddie has a misplaced love for Cathy, whom he seeks to control
and won’t take advice from anyone about giving her a bit of space to
grow and change. Their relationship and its crisis makes the drama
of the piece – Arthur Miller often portrays deeply flawed, real humans
in crisis situation and Eddie’s compares with Logan in ‘Death of a
Salesman’. The ‘inevitable’ consequences of the flaws and circumstances
drive the action to a ‘predetermined’ conclusion. And though the action
doesn’t go exactly where I anticipated, it makes difficult watching – if
brilliant performance. This production, directed by Stephen Unwin, is
spellbinding and dark but illuminates and instructs on controlling baser
instincts, and its one to ponder. To 11-04-15 Jane Howard08-04-15
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