A reviews round-up for A View from the Bridge starring Mark Strong at the Wyndham’s Theatre.
The acclaimed Young Vic production of Arthur Miller’s A View From The Bridge opened last night (16 February 2015) at the Wyndham’s Theatre.
Directed by Ivo van Hove, Arthur Miller’s dark, passionate tale, is a stark and compelling hit with critics and audiences alike.
Mark Strong and Nicola Walker lead the cast with Phoebe Fox, Emun Elliott, Michael Gould and Luke Norris also starring.
See reviews below including The Guardian, Financial Times and the Daily Mail.
BOOK
Book tickets to A View from the Bridge
Average Critics Rating
★★★★★
REVIEWS ROUND-UP
The Guardian
★★★★★
“Mark Strong, Nicola Walker and Phoebe Fox star in a menacing, meticulously conceived production. It’s like watching a runaway train hurtle towards you”
“There have been plenty of productions of Arthur Miller’s Greek tragedy-inspired drama about Eddie Carbone, the Italian-American longshoreman who becomes jealously fixated on his niece, Catherine. But you’ve never seen it staged like this.” [A View from the Bridge] is so merciless that it creates a sickening sense of awe. It’s like watching a runaway train hurtle towards you and being unable to move. It runs uninterrupted for two hours and leaves you as broken as the characters.
“ this is a production that releases the play from its naturalistic trappings – and in doing so distils it and makes it seem timeless and universal. This is not just somebody else’s family tragedy. It speaks directly to us and suggests that there is an Eddie Carbone lurking in all of us, just as there is a vengeful Electra and a blind Oedipus.”Read more
Financial Times
★★★★★
“A triumphant West End transfer for the Young Vic’s production of Arthur Miller’s drama”
“In van Hove’s distilled staging, 1950s Brooklyn isn’t physically present but its influence is understood. The action unfolds in a starkly lit, bare rectangle, making the characters look like laboratory specimens. This antiseptic setting should drain the emotion; in fact it has the opposite effect: the psychological drama becomes acute. The claustrophobia of the tight-knit community, the code of honour among the men — these are felt in the characters’ behaviour. Most importantly, this sparse arena knits together the domestic drama with the influence of Greek tragedy (often an awkward mix) to deliver the scale of the agony for those involved.”
“Strong is simply outstanding as Eddie, a man whose fiercely loyal, dogged nature won’t allow him to recognise the danger in his shifting love for his teenage niece (Phoebe Fox). Strong starts to look like a wounded animal in a snare: tormented and dangerous. Nicola Walker is beautifully understated as Beatrice, as she tries, together with Michael Gould’s exasperated lawyer, to divert Eddie from catastrophe.”Read more
Daily Mail
★★★★
“This one is not for theatrical vegetarians. It is strong meat served very rare.” Strong tears raw flesh from the bones of Arthur Miller’s doomed, elemental tragedy set among Italian dockers and illegal immigrants of Fifties’ New York. “Nicola Walker oozes exasperation as the loyal wife charged with puncturing Strong’s fantasy. “
Read more
The Daily Telegraph
★★★
“A stylised, pared-back staging distracts from the power of Arthur Miller's classic play”
“The sense of inevitable slaughter, of something ancient and ritualistic at the drama’s heart, is beautifully conveyed. The opening and closing tableaux are exquisite. At the start, Mark Strong’s bald, muscular Carbone scrubs himself slowly beneath a high-falling shower of water, every inch the toiling worker; at the end, he’s submerged beneath a huddled scrum of bodies, all soaked to the skin by a blood-red downfall.”Read more
Daily Express
★★★★
“A lean, mean drama machine.”
“Strong's beautifully controlled performance gives him a tragic grandeur by keeping the lid on the potential for DeNiro/Pacino histrionics.”Read more
Time Out
★★★★★
“To say visionary Belgium director Ivo van Hove’s production of ‘A View from the Bridge’ is the best show in the West End at the moment is like saying Stonehenge is the current best rock arrangement in Wiltshire: it almost feels silly to compare this pure, primal, colossalthing with anything else in Theatreland.”
“What is extraordinary is the way in which Van Hove and his tightly-wound cast make his unravelling unfold: Miller’s terse text is turned into some fantastic hybrid of British naturalism, Greek tragedy, lab experiment and religious ritual, that begins with angelic music and light and ends in an all-consuming fountain of blood.”Read more
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