A View From The Bridge

Shitty seat. I paid a relatively steep price just over $70 and ended up in the last row, right side section of the orchestra. Last row wouldn't be so bad if the balcony didn't hang so low, chopping off the top half of the stage. The effect is like viewing a sever letterboxed edition of the play - but it's a play ... and I can see the sets rising above my view ... but I don't get to see that during the performance. Stupid fricken ticket system. Doesn't tell you that when buying online. Luckily the action stayed planted on the stage floor but still it is annoying to have the view cutting off the full height of the brick walk-up and other Brooklyn scenes. Enough whining … onto the play.

I love Arthur Miller and somehow I've never seen this play. He is such a layered playwright, always giving more to the script and natural dialog more than is found on first read or first experience. In this tale about an Italian family living in Red Hook, Brooklyn, familiar and resonating themes of immigration, financial struggle, paternal control, sexual tension, and homophobia still play very well today as they did back in 1955. I kept thinking how this could even be re-staged and directed with only slight modifications to be in Texas or California with Mexican immigrants searching for a better life ... or practically any hard-working blue collar place where male-dominated families struggle to make a better life in a rough, tough, corrupt blue-collar world.

This staging played it safe with a traditional approach - realistic sets, strong actors, expected lighting. The two big name draws are Liev Schreiber as the controlling patriarch and Scarlett Johansson, in her Broadway debut, as his niece, Catherine. Both gave competent and strong performances with naturalistic moves and accents. The effortless Jessica Hecht was perfect as Beatrice, a bit beleaguered yet carefully and cautiously assertive. Michael Cristofer was weak as the narrative lawyer, Alfieri, seeming to stumble over lines and hovering too early in the stage right shadows during one transition thus distracting from the action. Corey Stoll and Morgan Spector played the two Italian immigrant relatives. Both were competent but Stoll seemed more balanced and subtle in him delivery, using his large frame not in a thuggish way but in a calming way, when lifting a chair or moving around the small flat. This served to make later action seem more impassioned than if he played it more muscling from the beginning.

Glad I went, sad I paid too much, frustrated at my crappy seats. It's all water under the bridge.