A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE

Wed 13 - Sat 16 February 2002
Performed at Northampton College Arts Centre, St Gregory's Road, Northampton

Photo gallery

Better to settle for half... it must be."

Arthur Miller has described A View from the Bridge as a 'social play' but it is also very much concerned with the fatal flaw of the personal tragedy.

He wrote that a play to the Greeks of the classical period was "by definition a dramatic consideration of the way man ought to live".‘

View brings to the audience real questions about how we should obey the moral, often unwritten, laws of a community, in this instance, the Sicilian-American one.

The conflict in Miller’s form of tragedy here though is a personal one in the character of Eddie Carbone. His struggle is not between man and some irresistible fate but a struggle against social forces that can be changed or overcome. What Eddie is unable to see is how his un-realised passion for his niece, Katie, is his fatal flaw, but fixes on a quest for honour and his ‘name’ which he believes the Sicilian brothers, Marco and Rodolphe have taken from him. (ln fact when the play was produced in Paris the director thought a French audience would not accept Eddie's failure of self awareness and the final scene, and outcome of the play was rewritten by Miller to reflect that. Our version is the original l956 UK script).

Such is his life in Brooklyn with Beatrice and Catherine that Eddie has to have it all as it was before the brothers came. He is unable as Alfien, who acts like a Greek chorus to the events, says to 'settle for half'.

Miller believed that "the theatre is above all else an instrument of passion" and in this Eddie is given full rein

This production is directed by Rob Kendall. He has also directed: Entertaining Mr Sloane (2000), East (1998), A Streetcar Named Desire (1997) and Antony and Cleopatra (1996)