Curtis Brown Photography
Long Wharf Theatre’s current production of Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge — running now through March 10 — marks not only a return to the “old neighborhood,” but also a return to a classic American play by a master of realist drama.
Long Wharf Theatre began its existence on Sargent Drive in 1965 with a production of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. Long Wharf’s model now is to make theater in a variety of locations throughout the New Haven area. Its late fall run of The Year of Magical Thinking was largely performed in a series of private residences. Its current offering of A View from the Bridge takes audiences to the Canal Dock Boathouse on Long Wharf Drive, to let its sweeping view of the Q bridge and the waters of New Haven Harbor act as scenic backdrop to the play. The play’s setting among Italian longshoremen in Brooklyn is well served by the location, and the theater has thoughtfully provided a shuttle that runs from the nearby IKEA parking lot to the Boathouse. (Parking along Long Wharf Drive is minimal and walking from the nearest free parking-lot might take 10 minutes or more, depending.)
The themes of the play, first staged in 1955, are still fresh, concerning illegal immigration, family dynamics, jealousy, betrayal, and the kind of overbearing behavior that often gets tagged now as toxic masculinity. Directed by James Dean Palmer, the production captures the feel of the play’s period — which is to say the show feels true to the text, but also a bit “classic,” as in dated.
The elements that are most novel here — the realism of the water outside and the fact that some of the action takes place outdoors — work slightly against the realism of the humble home in which the rest of the action takes place. The characters seem to be living (but for their furnishings) in a shoreline Connecticut home complete with spacious windows opening to the wonders of air and water. We have to imagine the much drearier and crowded rooms they are likely inhabiting.
Otherwise, the Long Wharf production is pretty much by the book — and it’s a good book. Eddie (Dominic Fumusa) earns his living on the docks. His wife, Beatrice (Annie Parisse), is anxiously awaiting two of her cousins who are immigrating illegally from Italy to work in the U.S. Tensions surface early when Catherine (Paten Hughes), Eddie’s niece who lives with the couple, announces that the principal of her stenography school has recommended her for a job. Eddie, in earnest paterfamilias mode, doesn’t approve; he doesn’t like the job’s location and employer, a plumbing outfit. He dreams of Catherine becoming a secretary in a Manhattan office.
Real trouble starts with the arrival of those cousins. Marco (Antonio Magro) is married with three children, one of them sickly, and a steady wife still in Italy to whom he sends everything he earns. Rodolpho (Mark Junek), though, is young, blonde, and very outgoing. He sings as he works the docks and wants to see Broadway and buy fancy clothes. He can cook, he can sew, and, to Eddie’s mind, he’s “not right.” But he’s the sort of colorful and seemingly sincere fellow able to impress a sheltered young girl (Catherine turns 18 in the course of the play).
Narrating the action for us at times is Alfieri (Patricia Black), a lawyer whom Eddie’s dad had consulted and trusted. With his niece’s new affections and attempts at independence nagging at him, Eddie turns to her for advice and is loath to accept that there’s nothing the law can do. The only illegal aspects of Rodolpho’s courtship is the fact that he’s an illegal alien. And if he marries the girl, even that will no longer be an issue. But to betray the truth of the illegal statuses of Marco and Rodolpho would be, for Eddie, tantamount to sticking his head in a noose. Alfieri, after a consultation with Eddie, tells us she could see what was going to happen, and so can we, more or less. The main question, for suspense purposes, is whether Rodolpho is sincere or the player Eddie takes him for.
The great thing about classic playwrights is their ability to create roles that actors can bring to life, giving audiences a glimpse of the struggles of earlier times, peopled by familiar types. The cast is uniformly excellent, showing us completely believable characters who are all trying to do what they think best. Fumusa’s Eddie, even at his worst, never stops being somewhat sympathetic, if, by the end, a bit erratic. His demand for a respect he needs to earn is the insistent note that leads to catastrophe. Parisse’s Beatrice is a carefully observed portrait of a woman who accepts a lot of guff but means well. As the shy Catherine discovering she’s not a little girl any longer, Paten Hughes travels the furthest dramatic arc, and Janek’s Rodolpho is every bit the charmer he’s seen as. As Marco, Antonio Magro has the exactly right presence as we watch him suss what’s what time and again. Able support comes as well from Mike Boland and Todd Cerveris as longshoremen and immigration officers. Then there’s Patricia Black’s Alfieri. We may wonder why the story needs a narrator at all, but her comments, especially at the close, are more in line with a Greek chorus, giving us a view of the story that lifts it to something close to tragedy.
You-Shin Chen’s set is wonderful to look at, with weathered floorboards and simple furnishings giving it all a lived-in feel, with the New Haven scenery and a dockyards facsimile beyond all that glass. Jane Shaw’s sound design makes sure we don’t miss the dialogue outside, and Kate McGee’s lighting gives a handsome luster to the show. Costumes by Risa Ando suit the levels of change that occur, with Catherine’s every new wrinkle, as it were, signaling her growth.
The struggle of illegal immigrant workers, a constant in the U.S., is written into the fabric of the play. And the issues of dysfunctional families, here entwined with patriarchal homophobia, give us a striking sense of how certain retrograde American values remain in place generation after generation. Long Wharf’s production of the play includes a view of a bridge; the play itself offers a view from a bridge to a future we haven’t quite managed to build.
Long Wharf Theatre’s production of A View from the Bridge runs at the Canal Dock Boathouse, 475 Long Wharf Dr., through March 10. Visit Long Wharf Theatre’s website for tickets and more information.