A View from the Bridge, written by Arthur Miller and directed by Ivo van Hove
The Goodman Theatre, September 9 – October 22, 2017
Reviewed by Jean-Thomas Tremblay
Ivo van Hove’s revival of Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge, the Goodman Theatre’s 2017–2018 season opener, oozes cynicism. This production offers nothing defensible on its own terms, and yet demands, aggressively, to be celebrated on the basis of its star director’s alleged genius. Van Hove camouflages incongruity and pompousness as rawness. He appears persuaded that no one will notice the subterfuge. Or perhaps he’s too contemptuous of his audience to care if anyone does.
Miller’s play begins in 1955 as Brooklyn longshoreman Eddie Carbone (Ian Bedford) welcomes, not without some reluctance, his Italian cousins, Rodolpho (Daniel Abeles) and Marco (Brandon Espinoza). Whereas Marco, a hardworking husband and father, is self-effacing, Rodolpho’s effeminacy—he sings at work—yields discomfort. Confrontations erupt when Rodolpho starts going out with Eddie and his wife Beatrice’s (Andrus Nichols) niece Catherine (Catherine Combs), of whom Eddie is zealously possessive.
In A View from the Bridge, Miller spells out misogynistic and homophobic ideologies with characteristic didacticism: in order to maintain the incest taboo, Eddie must give his niece away, though not to the queer figure whose illegibility throws into disarray the family unit and its symbolic integrity. Every theater season, of course, revivals of regressive plays profuse. But Van Hove shows no interest in commenting on the politics here deployed. Van Hove insisted in interviews published last summer that the play’s depiction of immigrant workers and their monitoring and surveillance supplied enough evidence of the work’s contemporary relevance. Van Hove mistakes references to immigration with trenchant commentary.
Van Hove’s production, which transferred to Broadway in the fall of 2015 after runs at London’s Young Vic and Windham’s Theatre, earned the 2016 Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play. The set, imported from the show’s previous runs, accomplishes the unlikely feat of making minimalism showy. A fluorescent-lit prism, deeper than wide, cracks the Goodman’s traditional proscenium configuration. For no apparent reason other than to provide, as an ad pledges, “the ultimate theatrical experience,” rows of seats are added on each side of the thrust stage. For Van Hove and his scenic and lighting designer Jan Versweyveld, proximity to the action, no matter the content of the action, enhances viscerality.
The direction proves just as baroque as its setting. Cast members are confined to one-note portrayals. Catherine, a human projectile, throws herself in all directions. She repeatedly jumps into Eddie’s arms, wrapping her legs around his torso. The blocking screams, “Theirs in an inappropriate intimacy.” Van Hove’s direction slips from unsubtle to outright gimmicky when, as the climate grows hostile, a metronome marks the cadence of the actors’ line delivery. The stunt quickly gets old, but it is somehow reprised a few scenes later with an added element: the stage directions are now read aloud. Such manufacturing of dramatic tension would be distracting if there were anything from which to be distracted. And still, the ending takes the cake. After a clash with Eddie’s cousins that leaves him stabbed, blood rains on the white stage. Rubbing salt in the wound, Alfieri (Ezra Knight), an American lawyer raised in Italy who serves as the play’s narrator or chorus, delivers a monologue regarding Eddie’s “perverse purity.” Nothing is as pure as toxic masculinity, indeed.
Van Hove may be a leading figure of avant-garde theater, but his staging of A View from the Bridge amounts to little more than ideological business as usual supplemented by tacky pyrotechnics.
November 2017