A View From the Bridge
Opening Night: November 12, 2015
Closing: February 21, 2016
Theater: Lyceum Theatre
Eddie Carbone is a Brooklyn longshoreman obsessed with his 17-year-old niece Catherine. When Catherine falls in love with a newly arrived immigrant, Eddie’s jealousy erupts in a rage that consumes him, his family, and his world.
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November 12, 2015
This must be what Greek tragedy once felt like, when people went to the theater in search of catharsis. Ivo van Hove’s magnificent reconception of Arthur Miller’s “A View From the Bridge,” which opened on Thursday night at the Lyceum Theater, takes you into extreme emotional territory that you seldom dare visit in daily life. At the end of its uninterrupted two hours, you are wrung out, scooped out and so exhausted that you’re wide awake. You also feel ridiculously blessed to have been a witness to the terrible events you just saw. Mr. van Hove, a Belgian director who has become the contemporary theater’s most celebrated exponent of maximal minimalism, has stripped stark naked Miller’s 1956 drama of a self-imploding Brooklyn longshoreman. And what he and his cast, led by the astonishing Mark Strong, find beneath the play’s period trappings and kitchen-sink naturalism is a pure primal force. In this centennial year of Miller’s birth, his exalted notion that classic tragedy and the common man can indeed coexist has never seemed so organic.
READ THE REVIEWNovember 12, 2015
The latest revival of “A View From the Bridge”—the Arthur Miller play is having its third Broadway outing in 18 years—will be noted for its stark set, ghostly sound effects and mesmerizing performance by Mark Strong, as the conflicted Italian-American longshoreman Eddie Carbone. Belgian director Ivo van Hove’s stripped-down take on the 1955 drama takes place on a well-illuminated square stage surrounded by benches. He has nearly turned the Lyceum Theatre, where “Bridge” has just opened, into a boxing ring. Van Hove’s acclaimed reinvention was named Best Revival at the 2015 Olivier Awards. Strong, who has appeared in films such as “Zero Dark Thirty” and “The Imitation Game,” also took home an Olivier. Over two hours, with no intermission, “Bridge” steadily builds anxiety, because of its performances, surely, but also due to a ceaseless humming that reminds you of being at the movies when a subway passes nearby … though here, the rumbling never stops.
READ THE REVIEWNovember 12, 2015
If you think you’ve seen Arthur Miller’s dark classic “A View From the Bridge” enough times, think again. The muscular production that opened Thursday night at Broadway’s Lyceum Theatre is a stunning, imaginative theatrical experience, an impassioned interpretation that really brings the heat to Miller’s gripping drama. Imported from London’s Young Vic after winning three Olivier Awards, the streamlined, no-holds-barred presentation marks an explosive Broadway debut for renowned European director Ivo van Hove and his longtime design collaborator, Jan Versweyveld. Miller’s 1955 play about working-class Italian-Americans in Brooklyn was most recently revived on Broadway in 2010 with Liev Schreiber and Scarlett Johansson. Now van Hove has stripped it down to a stark set that resembles a boxing ring. During nearly two tense hours without intermission, the barefoot cast members warily circle one another under bright lights, while a dissonant soundtrack increases the tension and unease.
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November 12, 2015
High-rotation classic texts sometimes resurface on Broadway for inadequate reasons — often to provide a vehicle for a major star, whether or not the creative team has found valid new ways to illuminate the work. That’s most definitely not the case with Belgian avant-garde director Ivo van Hove’s riveting take on Arthur Miller’s “A View From the Bridge.” The production ties the audience’s stomachs in knots almost from the outset, and then inexorably tightens those knots with a ferocious sense of purpose and control over its unbroken two-hour duration. Performed by a sizzling ensemble led by Mark Strong, this is powerhouse theater that leaves you breathless.
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November 12, 2015
Shatteringly tough revivals such as “A View from the Bridge” can inspire dueling emotions. First, obviously, there’s immense satisfaction and gratitude that Belgian director Ivo van Hove digs down and grabs the pulsing, bloody heart of Arthur Miller’s 1956 drama about Italian-American dockworkers’ tragically tangled codes of honor. But then comes anger that similarly audacious visions of the classics are so rare; by and large, we don’t know what to do the world’s greatest plays. Let’s get to the love first, and rage later.
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