'A View from the Bridge': a great classic very well served

Arthur Miller (New York, 1915 - Roxbury, Connecticut, 2005) is one of the most poignant playwrights of 20th-century realist theater in the United States. His work A View from the Bridge has not lost its relevance: the issue of irregular immigration is very much alive among us and also in Donald Trump's United States, with an immigration police (ICE) as feared and savage as in the fifties, when Miller sets this story.

It is the tragedy of an impossible passion, of a sickly obsession on the docks of a Brooklyn inhabited by immigrants like Eddie Carbone (David Selvas), the protagonist. He is a longshoreman of Italian origin who lives with his wife Beatrice (Laura Conejero) and his orphaned niece Catherine (Laura Gaja) and who welcomes his wife's cousins, Marco (Nil Cardoner) and Rodolfo (Jan D. Casablancas), into his home. The newcomers come to seek a living from a Sicily where they had neither a present nor a future.

Sílvia Munt's proposal, based on an excellent translation by Joan Sellent, takes place on the facade of a dilapidated building (I would say a bit too lumpen), with no more props than five chairs. It is a very direct and clear proposal, with a precise rhythm in the transitions, which enhances both the everyday nature of the relationships while bringing out the depth of the characters and the portrait of a heteropatriarchal society. David Selvas portrays very well Eddie's evolution from his initial family happiness to his inner struggle against a feeling he does not want to recognize and that overwhelms him. He also skillfully shows the outer struggle against Rodolfo, who wants to take away from him what he loves most.

Laura Gaja's Catherine seems a bit childish to us at the beginning, but the arrival of the cousins changes her life. Laura Conejero fills Eddie's confusion with common sense and vindicates the role of women. The restraint of Nil Cardoner's Marco is very appropriate, as is the confidence of Casablancas's Rodolfo, as well as the performance of Eduard Buch as the lawyer who explains the story. Despite Rodolfo's questionable wardrobe (more typical of a high school student) and Catherine's (dressed the whole time as if she had just gotten out of bed), this is a highly recommended play for all theater lovers.