“View From the Bridge” and “Death of a Salesman” (running in repertory at Arena Stage’s Arthur Miller festival) are both about obsessive love. In “Salesman,” Willy Loman’s outsized emotions and expectations for his son Biff are an extension of his deluded ardor for the American dream of success.
In 1956’s “A View From the Bridge,” obsessive love taints the family dynamic and more modest ambitions of Eddie Carbone (Delaney Williams), a Brooklyn longshoreman and the injured heart of this searing, startlingly alive production, directed by Daniel Aukin.
Eddie is more than just doting and overprotective of his niece, Catherine (Virginia Kull), who lives with him and his fretsome wife, Beatrice (Naomi Jacobson), in a small apartment in a working-class Italian neighborhood. He says he just wants the best for her — a secretarial job in a fancy Manhattan skyscraper is his idea of moving on up. Yet Eddie grows growly and unhappy with each step Catherine takes toward independence, steps encouraged by the tightly watchful Beatrice.
The dark depths of his attraction boil over when his wife’s cousins, illegal Sicilian immigrants Marco (a brooding, tightly coiled Louis Cancelmi) and Rodolpho (David Agranov, all expansive gestures and dapper bonhomie) join the household and Catherine falls in love with the blond, affably charming Rodolpho.
What starts out as a way for a new generation of immigrants to get a leg up in postwar America turns into an ugly tale of betrayal and twisted fixation. Everyone tells Eddie to just let go and let Catherine grow up, but Eddie allows his feelings to ruin him. Mr. Williams unforgettably portrays the disintegrating Eddie as a big palooka who struggles to express himself in words (he articulates his discomfort with Catherine’s maturation by complaining that she’s “walking wavy”). Red-faced, crying, sulky, this hulking macho man becomes womanly, an emotional slave. He even withholds sex from his wife, a stereotypically female ploy.
In contrast, the women become take-charge and aggressive. Eddie almost shrinks from Catherine’s burgeoning ripeness (Miss Kull is a combustible mix of guilelessness and bombshell allure). The more petite, pent-up Beatrice literally beats on her galoot husband to make him see the truth.
Mr. Aukin’s direction emphasizes the effect of too many bodies crammed into tight spaces, as seen, for example, in the light sexual tension emitted by Catherine and Rodolpho as they slow-dance in the living room as the rest of the family silently watches. This effect is also seen in the accreted menace of the scene where Beatrice confronts Eddie about his feelings while he ham-handedly tries to help her take down their tiny Christmas tree.
Eddie Carbone and Willy Loman share a love for their children that goes unnaturally out of bounds and destroys them. They also are alike in their tragic insistence on wanting their names known and respect paid — no matter what the price.
***1/2
WHAT: “A View From the Bridge,” by Arthur Miller
WHERE: Arena Stage in Crystal City, 1800 S. Bell St., Arlington
WHEN: Running in repertory with “Death of a Salesman.” Through May 17.
TICKETS: $47 to $66
PHONE: 202/488-3300
WEB SITE: www.arenastage.org
MAXIMUM RATING: FOUR STARS
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