Movie review: A View From The Bridge

Luke Norris, Emun Elliott, Phoebe Fox and Mark Strong in A View from the Bridge.

Beyond praise: Luke Norris, Emun Elliott, Phoebe Fox and Mark Strong in A View from the Bridge.

Phrases from the Faure Requiem, notably the Kyrie Eleison (a haunting call on God's mercy), provide the doom-laden soundtrack to this bold and brilliant production of Arthur Miller's titanic 1955 tragedy of sexual obsession.

Looped and repeated, they have the force of a bell tolling, as does the beat of a single conga drum, ratcheting up the menace by the minute. It's a masterly touch in a show chock-a-block with them.

For my money, Bridge is the best play by the English language's second-best playwright. That it never gained the iconic status of the classroom classic Death of a Salesman is doubtless to do with its much darker subject matter, but in it, Miller traffics in elemental ideas, and his writing, which blends the choppy, syncopated immigrant vernacular with the sublimely poetic and evocative, is the work of a man at his creative peak. (Was there a better last line in any play, ever?)

Italian-American watersider Eddie Carbone (Strong) and his wife Beatrice (Walker) are raising their orphan niece Catherine (Fox) in their modest Brooklyn apartment. When they take in a pair of illegals from the old country, Marco (Elliott) and Rodolfo (Norris), and Catherine takes a shine to one of the new arrivals, it lights a slow-burning fuse of possessive rage in Eddie, which everybody but he can see burning.

Miller gives us the story as he heard it, told by a lawyer (Gould), who operates as a Greek chorus, illuminating the dread inevitability of the story's "bloody course" with a mixture of sorrow and horror.

The acting in this Young Vic production, which is going out under the NT Live banner, is pretty much beyond praise. Strong, whose Eddie always seems to be simmering more than boiling over, warrants particular mention for a mesmerising and unforgettable performance.

But under the sure hand of acclaimed Belgian director van Hove the play emerges as a complete theatrical experience. The production abounds in inspired ideas, from the bare stage - a single chair, with serves a powerful dramatic function is the only prop - to the barefoot cast and a sequence near the midpoint where the dialogue is throttled by long silences is almost unbearably good.

It saves the best for last, too. Only in the dying moments do we realise why Jan Versweyveld's set design - part goldfish bowl, part hall of mirrors - is built as it is. And for those moments, we dare not breathe.

It may be on screen, rather than stage, but this is as good a piece of dramatic theatre as you'll see anywhere.

Cast: Mark Strong, Nicola Walker, Phoebe Fox, Michael Gould, Emun Elliott, Luke Norris
Director: Ivo Van Hove
Running time: 135 mins
Rating: M
Verdict: So good it's hard to breathe

- TimeOut