Review: A View From The Bridge, Theatre Royal Bath – ‘Unmissably golden’

It’s very rare indeed to be reviewing a play – or to be a playwright – and to get to really enjoy it as just “a night at theatre”. Lindsay Posner’s A View from the Bridge, with Dominic West leading a superb team, undoubtedly wins this accolade.

Miller’s Brooklyn-set tragedy is Shakespearean – even Greek – in style, with a ‘chorus’, a narrator, who book-ends the drama. You know the thing – heck, you even see it in The Princess Bride when Grandpa (Columbo’s Peter Falk!) opens his storybook.

Here, a lawyer called Alfieri, gorgeously played by Martin Marquez, unfolds an eternal tale of immigration for work, and of staying for love. His tale sets out to explain a philosophy for survival in a new land (compromise). But perhaps most importantly, it explores an age-old story of love, family, men and women, and the horrors that can happen when middle age is forced to recognise the flowering of youth.

Dominic West as Eddie

Dominic West plays an all-too recognisable man-of-the-family: Eddie. Thanks to the wonders of the tiny black-box Ustinov Studio at Theatre Royal Bath, his king o’ the castle, fear-fed domineering boorishness, and his desperation to be The Big Man truly emanate through the air of the theatre.

His sulks, his bluster, his naked terror of losing his niece (by marriage) to a handsome, kind, talented young immigrant from the Old Country – a man who is everything Eddie is not – scream in many voices throughout Miller’s play. Needless to say, it doesn’t end well.

The emotional temperature is as high as an Eastenders Christmas Special, and could quickly get wearisome. But West is an utterly watchable lead in a production burning with talent.

Callum Scott as Rodolpho

Callum Scott Howells plays Rodolpho, Eddie’s young love rival – kind, funny, warm-hearted and generous. He can cook, sew, sing and dance. Nia Towle plays Catherine, Eddie’s babied, loving niece who must grow up. Where they – and Miller – beat Shakespeare hands-down is that these young characters are rounded, nuanced, and believable. Rodolpho has an older brother, Marco, played by Pierro Niel-Mee to perfection: a good man, led by values, but whose values will blind and destroy him.

And then there’s Eddie’s pained, rejected and suffering wife, Catherine’s aunt: Beatrice. Kate Fleetwood rises well to the eternal challenge of well-written female roles. Past the teenage years, women characters are rarely allowed to have a single motivation; they’re pulled hither and yon in multiple directions, stretched to breaking like drying-out elastic bands (yes, ouch). Fleetwood brings Beatrice’s horrible challenges hauntingly to life – to allow a fledgling child to fly, to recover the love of the man she loves, and – somehow – to cope with the unavoidable truth that her husband is in love with their niece.

Kate Fleetwood as Beatrice and Nia Towle as Catherine

Stay with me one moment longer – I must salute the off-stage stars that director Posner has brought together. Ginny Schiller’s casting is – as usual – exemplary. Paul Pyant’s lighting is stunningly subtle but highly effective. Peter McKintosh’s set and costumes give us a complete world to immerse ourselves in. Michaela Kennon gets a standing ovation for her dialect coaching (Brooklyn without a stereotypical ‘cawwww-fee’ in earshot, even when they had the chance!) and Bret Yount and Joanna Goodwin’s fight and movement work – in such a small space – also deserve a medal. There are more names – of course there are – and this applause extends to them, too.

Why do I add this? Because creating a world that lets a professional theatre-analyser like me get genuinely lost in it takes a complete – and talented – team.

It’s sold out in Bath, but a West End transfer has just been announced. So set some ticket alerts and go if you can because this heart-full show is unmissably golden.

Pierro Niel-Mee as Marco and Callum Scott Howells as Rodolpho

A View From The Bridge is at Theatre Royal Bath until March 16 at 7.30pm, with additional 2.30pm matinee shows on Thursday and Saturday. For ticket availability, visit www.theatreroyal.org.uk.

All photos: Johan Persson

Read more: Review: The Turn of the Screw, Theatre Royal Bath – ‘Beautifully haunting’

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