A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE. To 23 October.

Hornchurch

A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE
by Arthur Miller

Queen's Theatre To 23 October 2004
Tue-Sat 8pm Mat 23 Oct 2.30pm
Audio-described 23 Oct 2.30pm
Runs 2hr 5min One interval

TICKETS: 01708 443333
www.queens-theatre.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 19 October

Visceral Brooklyn tragedy.Arthur Miller's compact Greek tragedy, complete with lawyer Alfieri as one-man Chorus, receives a vivid revival at Hornchurch. Matt Devitt's production goes for broke with passion and violence, built round Philip Whitchurch's fine portrayal of confused longshoreman Eddie Carbone.

Confused' is putting it mildly; Eddie's in the grip of passions as strong and, to him, inexplicable as the dionysiac chorus of Euripides' The Bacchae. No doubt in a Greek tragedy he'd have been struck with passion, Phaedra-like, by an angry god. Meanwhile Alfieri sits at his desk on the sidelines, brought to the edge of his temper, but representing the world of the majority fortunate enough never to be tested.

A largely school audience were, in pockets, imperfectly behaved but seemed swept along by the enormous passions, with genuine shock at physical moments like Eddie's provocative kissing of Rodolpho, suitor for Eddie's niece, whom the older man believes is after Catherine's hand to get a grip on US citizenship. And at the moment Eddie's wife Beatrice faces him with the truth of his own unacknowledged desire for the teenage girl.

There was enthusiasm too for the final fight, when Rodolpho's big brother Marco, betrayed by Eddie to the immigration authorities, smashes a plank across Eddie's increasingly groggy body with a fatal outcome. As James Waverley stands over the collapsing Eddie, the image repeats the end of act one, where Marco faces down the man whose been tormenting Rodolpho by holding a chair over his head.

Diana Croft brings a patient shrewdness to Beatrice, while Maria Lawson grows in voice and movement from a doll-like child looking up to Eddie, into a determined, assertive-voiced young woman coping independently with experience. But Whitchurch is the focus of the production's power. While Philip Reed's Rodolpho rightly avoids a sense of the effeminate whatever the immigration issue that's all in Eddie's head Whitchurch opposes the young man's grace in dancing with lumbering movements suggesting both the heavy worker and someone embarrassed at physicality and feeling. All Eddie's reactions demonstrate imperviousness to any outside ideas; a fine performance in a strongly visceral production.

Alfieri: James Earl Adair
Eddie: Philip Whitchurch
Louis/Tony/Immigration Officer: Richard Emerson
Catherine: Maria Lawson
Beatrice: Diane Croft
Marco: James Waverley
Rodolpho: Philip Reed
Mike/Immigration Officer: Eamonn O' Dwyer
Residents of Redhook: Neil Casey, Lee Collins, Ian Grigson, Linda Howard, James Moss, Steve Probert, Pam Shrimpton

Director: Matt Devitt
Designer: Rodney Ford
Lighting: Matthew Eagland
Fight director: Malcolm Ranson
Dialect coach: Robert Macdonald

2004-10-21 10:56:04