Casting has been announced for the forthcoming Headlong, Octagon Theatre Bolton, Chichester Festival Theatre and Rose Theatre revival of Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge.
The production will star Jonathan Slinger (Hamlet, Macbeth, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) as Eddie, and Nancy Crane (Inside Man, Suspicion, Summer & Smoke, Chimerica) as Alfieri.
The role of Alfieri is usually played by a man, but this new production directed by Headlong Artistic Director Holly Race Roughan has cast a woman in the role, and aims to look at the psychology of the play and its gender politics in a fresh light.
Slinger and Crane are joined by Kirsty Bushell (Richard III, Angels in America) as Beatrice, Rachelle Diedericks (The Crucible, Our Generation) as Catherine, Elijah Holloway as Louis/Immigration Officer, Luke Newberry (When Winston Went to War with the Wireless) as Rodolpho, Tommy Sim’aan (Vigil, The Tempest) as Marco and Lamin Touray (Bouncers, Coronation Street) as Mike/Immigration Officer.
The full creative team includes: Emily Ling Williams – Associate Director, Moi Tran – Set and Costume, Mona Camille – Set and Costume Associate, Max Perryment – Composer and Sound Designer, Keegan Curan – Sound Associate, Alex Fernandes – Lighting Designer, Malik Nashad Sharpe – Movement Director, Aundrea Fudge – Voice and Dialect Coach, Kev McCurdy – Fight Director and Yarit Dor – Intimacy Director.
A View From the Bridge will premiere at the Octagon Theatre Bolton on 8 September 2023, until 30 September, followed by Chichester Festival Theatre from 6 to 28 October 2023, and a London run at the Rose Theatre in Kingston from 31 October to Saturday 11 November 2023.
Book tickets for A View From the Bridge at the Rose Theatre Kingston in London
What They Said
Actor Jonathan Slinger said in a press statement: “I am thrilled to be working with the highly acclaimed Headlong Theatre and Artistic Director, Holly Race Roughan on what will be my first time taking to the professional stage in a piece by the great Arthur Miller. Being from Lancashire myself, Bolton’s Octagon Theatre is a theatre close to my heart and the ideal venue for us to debut this fascinating new production that examines Arthur Miller’s classic text.”
Actor Nancy Crane said: “Holly’s production is going to be a new perspective on one of Arthur Miller’s best-known plays. I’m excited to be the first woman to play Alfieri and can’t wait to see what it does to the play’s themes of masculinity and toxic masculinity. A modern-day Greek tragedy about love and identity and belonging and revenge, it seems to me incredibly relevant in 2023.”
Director Holly Race Roughan said: “Quite honestly, A View from the Bridge remains one of the most extraordinary plays I have ever read, and it is an honour to be co-producing it alongside some of the country’s most important theatres. Mounting the first major revival in the UK for nearly a decade, I am eager to explore its startlingly relevant themes with today’s audiences: the human price of a country’s immigration policies, ripping into the personal roar of suppressed feelings and the tenderness of romantic love. As with all my work, I am very interested in the thin membrane between the unconscious and the conscious. I am also excited by the play’s brutal and honest exploration of masculinity and how that sits with a modern audience. By casting Alfieri as a woman I hope to illuminate further the presence of the ‘feminine’ emotional intelligence in the play, and its offer to help build a new kind of masculinity.”
