A View from the Bridge, Wyndham's - theatre review: 'Mark Strong gives a notable performance of brooding intensity'

Arthur Miller classic is given new lease of life by experimental Belgian director Ivo van Hove
Excellent performances: Richard Hansell as Louis, Nicola Walker as Beatrice, Mark Strong as Eddie, Michael Gould as Alfieri, Emun Elliott as Marco (Picture: Alastair Muir/Rex)
Fiona Mountford2 April 2015

The problem with classic plays is that, in our minds at least, they can become cluttered and dusty, trailing after them into each revival the detritus of past productions. When this happens, it’s a case for Ivo van Hove. The experimental Belgian director is a professional declutterer par excellence and his radical rejuvenation of this over-familiar Arthur Miller drama takes up a deserved berth in the West End after a universally acclaimed, sell-out run at the Young Vic last year.

Events unfold in Red Hook, a rowdy immigrant neighbourhood of Brooklyn where Eddie Carbone (Mark Strong) works as a longshoreman. Yet van Hove doesn’t have time for the fuss and fiddle — not to mention constriction — of period and place-specific trappings. Instead designer Jan Versweyveld offers the universality of an almost bare stage, with a playing area for the barefoot actors marked out by a low Perspex surround. The space is eerily suggestive of a fish tank, a zoo enclosure or maybe even a boxing ring.

This sleek, minimalist staging helps the production to feel as tightly, and inexorably, wound as a Greek tragedy, as Eddie hurtles blindly to his inevitable fate and we wait in horrified yet thrilled anticipation. He is overly protective — and perhaps something more sinister — towards his 17-year-old niece and ward Catherine (Phoebe Fox), something of which his wife Beatrice (Nicola Walker) is only too aware. Catherine’s love for an Italian immigrant is the catalyst for disaster and the wonderful Fox, one of the finest of an upcoming generation of acting talent, traces exquisitely Catherine’s sudden, painful awareness that there are complex sexual currents at work in her previously tranquil home.

Strong gives a notable performance of brooding intensity as a man unexpectedly perplexed by a life that always used to be simple and there’s another cherishably intuitive turn from the always excellent Walker, a star of recent television hit Last Tango in Halifax. No less praise is due to Tom Gibbons’s haunting sound design, which lets the plangent strains of Fauré’s Requiem infuse the action.

Until April 11 (020 7922 2922, aviewfromthebridgewestend.com)

Latest theatre reviews

1/50

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in