Arthur Miller’s 1955 play A View from the Bridge, set in the impoverished world of New York dockers and longshoremen, has the same sense of timelessness as the Greek tragedies it references.  Yet the subplot about desperate illegal immigrants and their precarious twilight existence strikes an urgent contemporary note today.

Eddie Carbone is a simple and good-hearted manual labourer.  Thanks to his generosity and sense of responsibility his wife Beatrice has never had to work and together they have raised Beatrice’s orphaned niece Catherine as their own.  But as Catherine has grown up Eddie has become more over-protective and possessive of her, and Beatrice’s eagerness for Catherine to fly the nest is as much for her own sake as her niece’s.

Miller’s narrator is the neighbourhood lawyer Alfieri, a not-so-cool and dispassionate observer of the unfolding drama.  For him, legal practice walks hand in hand with the laws of nature: “The law is only a word for what has a right to happen”.  As Eddie’s natural affection for Catherine becomes something more sinister, the catalyst for his inevitable punishment arrives in the guise of Beatrice’s illegal immigrant cousins, Marco and Rodolpho.

Olivier award-winner Con O’Neill plays Eddie with a surprising amount of tolerance and humour – in fact humour is the overwhelming note of Sarah Frankcom’s production – but the moment in Act Two when Eddie crosses the line with his niece draws an audible gasp of horror from the audience.

Anna Francolini’s jealous Beatrice, who seems rather too smart and middle-class to be married to a docker, revels in the shrewish aspects of the role, while Leila Mimmack’s feisty Catherine seems to grow up in front of our eyes.  Ronan Raferty’s sparkling and mercurial Rodolpho has exactly the quality the playwright describes of being able to make people laugh just from his manner of speaking.

Ian Redford was in the Exchange’s production of Antigone a couple of seasons ago, and his Alfieri seems steeped in classical Greek tragedy from the outset, while some lively cameos (assorted neighbours, longshoremen and immigration officers) remind us of the 1950s Brooklyn setting.

James Cotterill’s simple and uncluttered design lets the action move swiftly and clearly, and Peter Rice’s sound design is particularly interesting when Eddie makes his fatal phone call.

The tumultuous applause at the end of the show clearly indicates that the Royal Exchange has another hit on its hands.

A View From The Bridge is on until Saturday 25 June 2011
Prices £9-£32
Evenings: Mon-Fri @ 7.30, Sat @ 8pm
Matinees: Wed @ 2.30, Sat @ 4pm
Box Office: 0161 833 9833
www.royalexchange.co.uk

If you want a director who can really be said to be in touch with the intentions of a writer, then the Octagon’s artistic director David Thacker has more right than most to claim a special understanding of the work of legendary American playwright Arthur Miller, having collaborated with Miller for over 20 years while staging many productions of his work.

The Price, originally produced in 1968, is set more or less contemporaneously, but the drama has all taken place over 30 years earlier.  Victor Franz, a New York policeman on the brink of retirement, is clearing out the old family apartment because the building is about to be demolished.  The piles of furniture and bric-à-brac have languished there unused for years, a crumbling monument to the Franz family’s wealth and status before the 1929 Crash.  However the dealer who arrives to bid for the residuary estate of Victor’s long-dead father causes Victor, his wife Esther and estranged brother Walter to ask themselves the difficult question: what price can you put on a man’s life? 

With its contained setting, real-time playing and cast of four, The Price is like an intricate piece of chamber music for a quartet of virtuoso players.  David Thacker has assembled an amazing cast that is every bit as good on the stage as it promises to be on paper.

Playing Esther, Victor’s dissatisfied dipsomaniac wife, is Suzan Sylvester who won an Olivier award 20 years ago as the flighty Catharine in Miller’s earlier masterpiece, A View From the Bridge.  Moving on a generation, Suzan Sylvester plays the role with absolutely no self-pity or vanity.  Esther’s flouncing fits, sarcastic put-downs and two-piece suit call to mind a State-side Sybil Fawlty.

RSC actor Tom Mannion makes Victor a benign but impotent presence.  Having lived a life of self-sacrifice, there is definitely a hint of the saint and martyr about him; some of the broken old bits of furniture in the apartment have more animation and self-determination than Victor.  Thus Colin Stinton as his more worldly and successful brother Walter hardly has to assert any of the cold ruthlessness of which his character is accused to appear dynamic and vibrant next to Victor.

And as the comic relief, local legend Kenneth Alan Taylor gives a star turn as the eccentric elderly antique-dealer Gregory Solomon, who proudly proclaims: “I am registered, I am licensed, I am even vaccinated”.

Patrick Connellan’s in-the-round design crucially establishes a bi-polar sense of the items of furniture, ornaments and clothing heaped up round the stage - property that was clearly once beautiful and valuable but which now amounts to little more than salvage purely because of its social and historical context.

An excellent production that is a credit to the Octagon’s artistic team.

The Price is on at Bolton Octagon until Saturday 2 April 2011
Tickets: from £9.50
Eves: Mon-Sat @ 7.30pm
Matinees: Fri 11, Wed 23, Sat 26 March @ 2pm
Box Office: 01204 520661
www.octagonbolton.co.uk

 

 

Arthur Miller’s 1947 masterpiece All My Sons begins as a family drama, turns into a detective story, and ends as a Greek tragedy.

We’re in the back yard of a typical middle-American home a couple of years after the Second World War.  For the prosperous householder and paterfamilias, Joe Keller, the conflict was merely an opportunity to grow his small manufacturing business into a little gold-mine supplying engine parts for the army’s aeroplanes.  For his sons Chris and Larry, who piloted those planes, the war was about making the kind of self-sacrifice that would build a better world.  Now Chris is suffering an existentialist angst, realising that for most of his countrymen the war had no meaning and nothing has changed; while Larry is missing presumed dead, his plane having disappeared off the Chinese coast three years before. 

The uneasy status quo is shaken with the arrival of their former neighbour, Ann, Larry’s one-time girlfriend and now Chris’s intended bride; but his mother Kate opposes what would amount to the final acknowledgement of her other son’s death.  Over three acts and less than 24 hours the play peels back the half-buried war-time scandal surrounding the family firm and its link with Ann’s father and Larry’s accident.

David Thacker, the Octagon’s incoming artistic director, has chosen to open the new regime in Bolton with his specialist subject, Arthur Miller.  Thacker’s personal relationship with the playwright is well-documented, and his record for producing Miller’s plays in this country is second to none - indeed my own first exposure to professional theatre was his production of A View from the Bridge at The Young Vic, a space very similar to the Octagon. 

Although I’ve seen the Octagon in-the-round before, the playing area has never felt so close and immediate.  The tiny stage is denuded bar the most basic of props (in the way of a handful of tables and chairs), but in Patrick Connellan’s stunning design the floor is transparent colourless glass which reveals a forest of wooden joists buried in sand, representing the shaky foundations of the Keller home.

George Irving returns to the Octagon after his blinding performance in Shining City two years ago.  He remains faithful to Miller’s description of Joe Keller as “stolid”, but although superficially impassive and unemotional, below the surface there fizzes a James Cagney-esque nervous energy which eventually explodes to shattering effect.   

Margot Leicester, who was so brilliant as the grieving mother in A Conversation at the Royal Exchange, gives a wonderful performance here as a mother in denial about her grief, clucking and fussing around the neighbours in an apparently unselfconscious manner, but constantly on her guard.

Oscar Pearce (Chris) and Vanessa Kirby (Ann) are a fine pairing as the sad but wise young lovers, and Mark Letheren has a great turn as Ann’s flaky brother George, in the typical Elisha Cook Jr role of a little man in a too-big suit.

The four lead members of the cast are returning next month in David Thacker’s Lancashire-set production of Ibsen’s Ghosts, again with Patrick Connellan designing, so it will be fascinating to watch this talented team take on another classic domestic tragedy.

 

All My Sons is on at Bolton Octagon until Saturday 24 October 2009

Tickets: from £9.00

Evenings: Mon-Sat at 7.30pm

Matinees: Friday 2, Saturday 3, Monday 5, Wednesday 7 October and Sat 17 Oct @ 2pm

Box Office: 01204 520661

www.octagonbolton.co.uk

 

Other Octagon events exploring All My Sons:

 

5 October, 5.30-7pm - Les Smith talks to David Thacker about his relationship and work with Arthur Miller (tickets free).

 

14 October, 10am-1pm - David Thacker leads cast members in an investigation of the play (£5).

 

17 October, 10am-1pm - Christopher Bigsby, academic and biographer of Arthur Miller, discusses the playwright (£5).

 

24 October, 2-6pm - Caryl Churchill’s Seven Jewish Children will be performed alongside an extract from All My Sons followed by a discussion (tickets free - donations to Medical Aid Gaza).

 

 

After a critically acclaimed run in London, A View From The Bridge stops in Glasgow for one week as part of a very limited national tour.

 

Arthur Miller has created many tragic heroes in his time, and many of his plays focus on situations surrounding family loyalty and responsibility. A View From The Bridge seems to combine many of his themes in one play, and it’s humour and drama still provides entertainment to this day. The political statements that speak to us about our lives today, including the immigrant workers, the struggles for money are the background in which to place a simple story about misplaced love and loyalty.

 

This current production has pulled in two heavy hitters to lead the cast. Ken Stott as Eddie Carbone, a hardworking longshoreman, and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio as his wife Beatrice. The family unit is completed by orphaned neice Catherine, played by Hayley Atwell, whose movement into adulthood at age 17 provides the crux of the story. I’m unsure as to whether it was down to Lindsay Posner’s direction or Miss Atwell’s own performance, but her physical portrayal did seem a little too contrived and forced. Also there were some strange costume choices which seemed to contradict the script itself which I was very surprised to see in a production of this standard. On the other hand Ms. Mastrantonio’s minute movements are precisely placed and timed to make maximum impact. With the most genuine accent of all the cast, and probably the most genuine emotions throughout, she stood up to the powerhouse performance from Ken Stott, and definitely shone for me in this piece. Mr Stott had probably the most difficult of tasks as the character of Eddie is required to show huge shifts in emotion over very short periods of time. This could easily look “over-the-top” or forced, but the grounded performance from this diminutive actor ensured that it never crossed that line.

 

The story opens with the arrival of two immigrant Italian cousins, who are each met with different responses from the family (and also from this critic). Gerard Monaco as the hardworking family man Marco drew the audience into the likeable and humble side of his nature, while giving brief glimpses of the strength (both in character and physicality) which lay beneath. Harry Lloyd however, as Marco’s brother Rodolpho, was a different matter. Again, little production errors (like not dying the roots for someone who is supposed to be playing a natural blonde in a period piece!) didn’t help with the continuity of this character. The expressiveness and vivaciousness of this character was shown a little too excessively, and again I believe this may be down to direction more than the actors portrayal.

 

Over and above the performances mentioned above, Allan Corduner as the choric character of Alfieri. Although playing a part of the story as the Lawyer, it’s in the sections of narration where his authoritative tone makes it’s mark.

 

The scaling down of the set for this tour works well and the main living room set, design by Christopher Oram, works extremely well. The lighting design, by Peter Mumford, complements both the set, and the acting superbly, despite their being a few technical glitches on the opening night.

 

Although there were a few negative points, these were far outweighed by the positives in this production. As this is it’s only Scottish venue, they have luckily been able to add some extra seats this week, and they will be needed, as the chance to see these two leads deliver such strong performances should not be missed.

 

Listings

 

Mon 1:    7:30pm

Tue 2:     7.30pm

Wed 3:    7.30pm

Thu 4:     2.30pm, 7.30pm

Fri 5:       7.30pm

Sat 6:      2.30pm, 7.30pm

 

Tickets: £

Box Office: 0870 060 6647 (bkg fee)  web: www.theatreroyalglasgow.com