Miller’s ‘View From the Bridge’ a tale of envy and entropy
Eddie Carbone doesn’t see past his doorstep. Just look at his gaze, the way it scampers about the corners of his Red Hook home, how it never rises to a window but rather lingers indoors.
Eddie lords over the objects he’s kept here in his domain, the only place where he’s exactly the kind of man he thinks he is. Watching the terrific Mark Ziesler’s performance of Eddie — the sad protagonist of Arthur Miller’s “A View From the Bridge,” at the Alley Theatre through May 21 — you may be reminded of Smaug, the wily dragon from “The Hobbit,” inside his cave, salivating over a pile of gold.
Eddie’s jewel is Catherine (Cara Ronzetti), a niece whom he and his wife, Beatrice ( Josie de Guzman), adopted after Catherine’s parents passed away when she was young. Eddie loves the twirl of Catherine’s dress. He loves her high heels and slender legs. But he scolds her because to permit her beauty would be to permit the gaze of other men, and thus to acknowledge their existence.
But how can there be other men when all Eddie sees is a curly-haired diamond in the dark? How can two male cousins, arriving illicitly from Italy at Eddie’s home to make a living in America, exist as men when in his mind they are, like the rest of the world, nothing?
To call the Alley Theatre’s revival of Miller’s drama about immigration, toxic masculinity and the travails of the white working class timely would be accurate enough. But Miller’s story about Eddie is more than a portrait of apprehension that has arrived at a particularly apprehensive time. After all, its ideas never go away. As long as women and men are around, the play will invite reactions such as, “I know an Eddie” or, “I know a Beatrice.” “A View From the Bridge” may be staged in 2060 and deliver the same noxious brew of envy and entropy as it did at its 1955 premiere on Broadway.
As Eddie, Ziesler is so at home on stage he might be furniture. He’s silent, small as a stray piece of hair, until he barks. Then he’s the only person in the room. Though you never really see Ziesler’s face because he doesn’t like playing to the audience, you feel his voice. It’s the kind of voice that screams at you in your sleep.
Ronzetti is equally fit for Catherine, whose spunk and gaiety belie a simmering rage. Catherine’s a ray of light now, but keep her entangled in Eddie’s world of obsession and she might one day become Rose, the loyal but indignant wife in August Wilson’s “Fences.”
Gregory Boyd directs a production that favors text over innovation, the kind of masterpiece staging that might, in the larger culture, be overshadowed by the explosive auteurism of Ivo van Hove’s bare naked creation from 2016. Let Miller be the auteur, Boyd suggests. Let the writer’s twists and turns sing by way of a respectful treatment that begins with a leisurely, almost sluggish prelude that builds over time like a drumroll.
Eddie’s outrage is mostly turned toward fresh-offthe-boat cousin Rodolpho ( Jay Sullivan, charismatic as usual but this time with a funny wig and accent), who becomes Catherine’s suitor. That anger turns into homophobia, though it’s a different kind of hatred than the usual. Everyday bigotry is like a shotgun, loud and imprecise. Eddie’s is a sniper rifle, centered squarely on everything Rodolpho has that he doesn’t — talent, humor, youth, sexual vigor, Catherine’s affection.
Eddie’s final moments in the play are perhaps inevitable, but Sullivan, Ronzetti and de Guzman convince us that their characters have reason to see Eddie as the decent Average Joe. Like Boyd, they favor Miller’s text over artistic flourish, so that the sense of foreboding comes from the words and not from the actors’ body language.
At worst, this style comes across as coy under-delivery, but at best it’s strikingly subtle, reminiscent of the silent tension created by Reed Birney and Jayne Houdyshell in the 2015 Broadway production of “The Humans.” And the ensemble delivers that end-of-play feeling of both catharsis and anxious questioning — why, one’s lingering mind wonders, did these characters let all this happen?
People have criticized Miller for writing in a narrator, with the lawyer Alfieri, to provide some answers. But as Alfieri, Jeffrey Bean’s presence highlights the audience’s complicated relationship with Eddie and suggests that, like the theatergoer, Alfieri feels there is value in witnessing a man’s wickedness turn into ruin.
Alfieri’s remarks in the aftermath of the conflict on the waterfront aren’t an attempt to simplify or moralize Eddie’s tale but rather lend the play a structure that transcends the everyday. In becoming theater, Eddie transforms into literature. Zoom out a bit, and you see that “A View From the Bridge” has a Greek format (tragic hero as told by chorus) and British inspiration (kitchen-sink realism has roots in 1950s Britain), though, as a story about immigration and domain, it remains profoundly American.
In other words, the play is a reminder that calling anywhere home is a complicated and often life-threatening matter, that the idea of conquering territories old and new can apply to sex, ego, fatherhood, heteronormativity, neighborhood and nation. Eddie isn’t as revered as the supposedly universal Willy Loman, but he is, in his wild flailing, the more familiar archetype of patriarchy.
That’s where the power of “View” comes from. It’s the moment of realization, hitting the gut a few minutes into the second act, that Eddie could live right down the block, or somewhere even closer to your doorstep. It’s the thought that, even if Eddie’s pathologies are specific and perverse, the problems with his family can exist anywhere and anytime.