(Kennedy Center)
“I don’t understand this country,” Italian immigrant Marco says from jail in Arthur Miller’s classic A View from the Bridge. Marco may have been talking about American attitudes towards revenge, but in a play where tensions between immigrants and Americans run high, D.C. audiences facing their own tense political climate found a new poignancy in the line Monday evening.
Contemporary double meanings aside, a play first performed in 1955 finds new life today courtesy of director Ivo van Hove’s celebrated revamp. This staging brought home the Tony award for Best Revival in 2016, and is now finding an expanded audience courtesy of a limited engagement at the Kennedy Center.
Miller’s play follows a couple, Eddie (Frederick Weller) and Beatrice (Andrus Nichols), who take in two of their Italian immigrant cousins, Marco (a brooding, expressive Alex Esola) and his flamboyant brother Rodolpho (Dave Register). Their intentions are noble, but when Rodolpho catches the eye of the couple’s niece, Catherine (Catherine Combs), just on the cusp of adulthood, Eddie is obsessively driven to oppose the match and has to confront some ugly truths in the process.
Van Hove’s revival bathes in discomfort—a stilted family meeting drips with awkward silences, pierced by pulsing, relentless sound effects. Blood literally rains down on the cast in one of the play’s most climactic moments. A minimalist set allows the audience to focus on the play’s emotional upheaval.
Though the direction ratchets up the general uneasiness and sense of inevitable tragedy that permeates the work, it can’t compensate for all of the play’s melodramatic tendencies (Thomas Jay Ryan’s attorney narrator Alfieri’s looming presence still feels more like a device than a character).
Combs is a refreshing presence as Catherine, personifying the character’s prolonged adolescence, and van Hove deftly emphasizes the increasingly inappropriate closeness between her and Eddie. Weller paints a complex, vanity-free portrait of Eddie, unafraid to drift into unsympathetic territory. Alfieri closes the play, reluctantly impressed with Eddie’s tragic actions, noting “he allowed himself to be wholly known.” But Weller doesn’t allow his Eddie to be quite so forgivable, and the audience isn’t so ready to buy Miller’s hasty conclusion.
A View from the Bridge runs through Dec. 3 at the Kennedy Center. Tickets ($45-$149) are available online.
