Dominic West, Kate Fleetwood and Callum Scott Howells lead a starry but straightforward A View from the Bridge at the Theatre Royal Haymarket
“The guy ain’t right”
Originating at Theatre Royal Bath, you can see why Lindsay Posner’s production of A View from the Bridge has been imported into the West End. With Dominic West at the head of the cast, Kate Fleetwood, Callum Scott Howells and more alongside him at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, this is actually the first time Arthur Miller’s classic has been in the West End since Ivo van Hove’s sensational reimagining of the play made its own transfer from the Young Vic to the Wyndham’s.
Posner’s interpretation of the play sits at a much more conventional level though, as strait-laced and straight-forward as you could imagine, resulting in a production that ultimately feels rather safe, possibly even uninspired. That’s not to denigrate the quality of the acting at all, but rather just to consider the state of theatre, particularly in the West End, that consistently cleaves to the traditional. It just feels hard to get particularly excited by it.
At the heart of all this old-fashioned business, is something of an old-fashioned star turn. West has been off the stage for nearly a decade (last seen in the Donmar’s Les Liaisons Dangereuses) but has all the requisite roughness, robustness and roaring fervour to bring Eddie Carbone to life, a man slowly undone by suppressed illicit desire. Fleetwood as his increasingly pained wife, Nia Towle as his fateful niece and Scott Howells as her paramour also all give strong work.
But the pacing is staid, the physicality feels oddly studied, the strong accents misplaced, all combining to give an arch presentation of overly mannered theatre, exacerbated by the presence of the Greek chorus-esque narration. Themes of immigration, masculinity, even the driving power of poverty, could cut through more in this day and age, but this production is rooted in its 1950s setting and a presentation which is arguably closer to then than now.