A View from the Bridge

Abstract

In ten years of reviewing Arthur Miller plays for the Journal I have never been to Iowa. A View from the Bridge was the first time, and the performance was in Iowa City. The Riverside Theatre was founded in 1981 and is now in its thirty-fifth season. It is a professional theater peopled by faculty members at Iowa State University and surrounding colleges. From September to April they produce a full season in their 118-seat black box on Gilbert Street. In June and July they have a summer season of basically classics in their outdoor venue by the Iowa River.A View from the Bridge first opened 29 September 1955 in New York on a double-bill with Miller's Memory of Two Mondays, both as one-act plays. Miller later expanded View into a two-act piece, and this was the version presented in Iowa. Eddie Carbone, played by Patrick DuLaney, is a longshoreman in Brooklyn, New York. He lives in a small apartment with his wife Beatrice (Dristy Hartsgrove Mooers), niece Catherine (Katherine Slaven), and, recently arrived from Sicily, two illegal immigrants Rodolpho (Aaron Weiner) and Marco (Kehry Lane), cousins to Beatrice. Alfieri (Tim Budd) is a narrator, lawyer, and Eddie's confidant. The immigrants go to work with Eddie on the docks, but Rodolpho can sing and that gets Eddie's attention. Dangerous, he says. What if they get discovered by immigration agents? The real reason he is upset it seems is jealousy. Catherine and Rodolpho are singing their own tune and they are thinking marriage. This, of course, would cement Rodolpho in America. Eddie goes crazy over Rodolpho's slightest attention to Catherine, though it appears he himself has never significantly touched her except in a “fatherly” way.I have always thought there was not enough brooding by Eddie in the written play to convey his full range of feelings. For someone to go against everything in which he has always believed, the feelings toward Catherine must run deep and strong. The 1962 movie version directed by Sidney Lumet has him stalking the two young lovers, spying to see what they are doing. The film used more action than the play could accommodate to emphasize Eddie's torment over his niece's relationship and impending marriage to the illegal immigrant. The film also played down the potential specter of Eddie's incestuous feelings, as Raf Vallone presented Eddie as a man who mostly objected to an immigrant trying to take advantage.The director Sean Lewis brought life from the Riverside actors uniformly, and the stage was filled with some great character acting. Everyone in this stage version was excellent, completely immersed in their parts, and professional without a seam. When you saw them after the performance they were completely different people. As Eddie, DuLaney was a complete caricature of a hardworking longshoreman, who is not very bright. This is a possible reading of the character, but not one with which I felt entirely comfortable. Obviously not a star like Raf Vallone from the movie, while Vallone filled the screen with a real person, DuLaney had to invent an eccentric characterization, which was not always convincing. It is perhaps because the script does not provide the actor with enough to motivate such enormous jealousy. In reality Catherine would probably have been egging Eddie on sexually for years before the immigrants showed up to create such ardor. In this aspect, perhaps this is simply a flawed play. We will have to see how American Players attends to this problem in their 2017 summer production in Spring Green, Wisconsin.The other actors painted more realistic, rounded portrayals. Weiner and Lane as Rodolpho and Marco look more than a little lost, as if they really had just stepped off the boat from Italy, and spoke as if from a common Italian background. Catherine was played as a glamorous type, but she clearly treats her adopted father like a brother. There is never a hint of anything else between them.Mooers's presentation of Beatrice seemed the biggest departure, as she seemed far too young for the role. The character was much older than the actor, but this, perhaps, made her feelings of rivalry with Catherine the more telling. All together, the actors presented a powerful ensemble, the passions conveyed were subtle and interpreted in telling detail, and the production was thoroughly professional with hardly a seam. There was just one clumsy movement, but it was hard to tell who was responsible, in which one character slid across the stage as if into second base. It simply did not fit the mood/time period of the play.Scenic designer Shawn Johnson has created a set that tries to be abstractly industrial. Eight-inch-diameter silver pipes come out of the wall and extend several feet. Lights hang from them and shoot across vertically. At first I was puzzled, then my shaking head had a different meaning. This evocation of an industrial plant is certainly one of the most misconceived sets I have ever seen and does not fit the play at all.Costumes by April Bonasera are suitably working-class attire. The immigrants look like they have just come over from Italy. Lighting by Jeff Crone does a good job illuminating without being obvious. But the lights shooting vertically off the silver pipes, while pretty, do not seem to fill any special dramatic purpose.