A View From The Bridge, Theatre Review. Playhouse Theatre, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Bruce Alexander, Andy Apollo, Jason Carragher, Callum Coates, Daniel Coonan, Julia Ford, Scott Hazell, Lloyd Hutchinson, Denise Kennedy, Tom Peters, Joe Ringwood, Shannon Tarbet, Liam Tobin, Daryl Wafer.

Arthur Miller’s plays are such that to miss out on a production of them is simply not good form. All you really need to know about life in the United States in the 20th Century can be found in the writings of one of the keenest minds of the time and his look at certain frailties of life, emasculation, deceit, dishonour and the destruction of a system that was corrupt and hopelessly out of touch with his thinking, are repeated over and again in the hope that someone, anyone might understand what is going wrong in the country.

A View From The Bridge, like Death of a Salesman, The Price and of course The Crucible  is probably amongst the most celebrated of his works and being a port city, certainly at the time the most important seaport in England, the crowds in Liverpool would feel a certain kinship with the events that unfold during the play.

The scene unfolds on the life of Eddie Carbone, a decent man, steady job at the waterfront and well- liked by his friends until one day he allows two men he has never met before to live at his house and work as illegal immigrants as he struggles with own feelings towards his niece.  The close quarters in which the family exist in are already at breaking point, to add two never seen before cousins of his wife into the fold suggests more to the outwardly looking expansionism practiced by American politics of the time but also the keen eye that only Miller could cast over the way in which dock work was seen to be corrupt in which the home is not necessarily the decent place it purports to be.

The entire cast had to be on their toes for this play, anything of this nature needs to be handled properly and with great delicacy and all who were connected with it, from Andy Apollo, the superb Julia Ford as the sexually frustrated wife of Eddie Carbone to Liam Tobin, all gave their complete attention to the very intonations of each word, so very important in a Miller play.

Lloyd Hutchinson in particular held the audience in both hands throughout the entire evening. The suffering of a man in torment over the love he desperately locked away for his wife’s niece and also the insight into the mind of a man with his own intolerances, of wanting to both be protector to Catherine and at the same time that generation’s narrow minded pre-conceptions about how a man should act. The scenes between Catherine, played by Shannen Tarbet, Rodolpho, a very entertaining Andy Apollo and Mr. Hutchinson were of the highest quality and when an audience gasps at two influential moments in the play, the inhaling of breath so deep it was like a ship’s horn lost in the middle of the Atlantic, almost in unison, the company must know exactly just how powerful and formidable the moments were that they created.

The authority of the writing by Arthur Miller excels in nearly dominating over all but the cast rise above it flawlessly in this segment and snapshot in American theatre history. It takes a potent cast to be able to do that.

This adaption of A View From The Bridge is excellent production by Charlotte Gwinner in one of Arthur Miller’s seminal plays. Touching, brutal and unashamedly ferocious, both in the sexual anguish and almost impotent feel of Lloyd Hutchinson’s Eddie Carbone but also in the look at the lives of those who inhabited the world of New York and the life led by those desperate to travel thousands of miles for work.  The connection between playwright, actors and audience has never been stronger.

Ian D. Hall