Anthony Gooley and Janine Watson. Photo: Prudence Upton.
It is rare and wonderful to find theatre as powerful and engrossing as this pared-down and passionate production of Arthur Miller’s classic. It is mesmerising from start to finish.
Set in the 1950s in Brooklyn’s docklands, it is an explosive family drama that revolves around hardworking Eddie Carbone (Anthony Gooley), a family man devoted to his wife Beatrice (Janine Watson) and the niece who is like a daughter to them, Catherine (Zoe Terakes), and touches on themes that remain familiar to contemporary Australians. Welcomed into the Carbone household are Marco (David Soncin) and Rodolpho (Scott Lee), Beatrice’s cousins who have fled Sicily looking for work and a better life. They have come by boat and entered the US illegally. Now the stage is set for an exploration of moral codes, jealousy, post-war poverty, love and obsession.
I say the stage is set but in Iain Sinclair’s production (courtesy of designer Johathan Hindmarsh) it is bare floorboards, one wooden chair and – towards the end – a knife In the program notes, Sinclair references Lope de Vega’s dictum that all great theatre needs is actors, a stage and some passion. There is passion aplenty here, all wonderfully harnessed and barrelling towards a tragic conclusion.
Lawyer and narrator Alfieri (David Lynch), the voice of reason and also the one-man Greek chorus, leads us in. “Eddie Carbone had never expected to have a destiny. A man works, raises his family, goes bowling, eats, gets old, and then he dies. Now, as the weeks passed, there was a future, there was a trouble that would not go away.”
The trouble, through no fault of her own, is Catherine, 17 years old and blossoming. Eddie wants to protect her from the world, from men (“the less you trust, the less you’ll be sorry”) but it is soon clear that Eddie’s love for his niece goes way beyond the avuncular. When Catherine and Rodolpho fall for each other, Eddie loses all control.
The performances are magnificent. Gooley’s Eddie is full of simmering rage and jealousy (his dark “eyes like tunnels”); Watson gives us the anxiety felt by a neglected but loving wife, who is trying to reclaim her husband both for herself and for him; Terakes is wonderful as the innocent, enthusiastic and optimistic child-woman Catherine; Soncin’s Marco (whose eyes also become like tunnels when he is out for vengeance) is a likeable and solid man, desperate to earn money to send home to his wife and sick child; and Lee’s Rodolpho is engaging, fresh, a romantic and quite different to any of the men Catherine has met so far in her young life. No wonder she falls for him. He also has a sense of humour, and Eddie has quite lost his. Giles Gartrell-Mills is the seventh member of this strong ensemble, playing Louis, a one-time friend of Eddie, who he discards. A portent of things to come.
Shout-outs must also go to Clemence Williams for sound design, and to Matt Cox for simple and highly effective lighting. And let’s not forget costume designer Martelle Hunt, dialect coach Nick Curnow and fight director Scott Witt.
This Sinclair-directed A View From The Bridge was first seen at the Old Fitz and was Red Line’s most lauded production and biggest box office success of 2017. It picked up Best Independent Production, Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor/co-Best Newcomer (Zoe Terakes) in the Sydney Theatre Awards. Anyone who has seen it will not be surprised that it has gone on to have three more productions. If you haven’t caught it yet, don’t miss out this time. It’s at the Ensemble until 24 August.
Recommended without reservation.
