To say that the fans of Ivo van Hove’s pared-down landmark production of Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge will be disappointed would be harsh on the director’s new Miller revival, the author’s first hit which premiered in 1955.
Set in 1947, it stars Bryan Cranston, the Breaking Bad actor who knows a thing or two about playing morally compromised, upstanding members of the community. Here he is terrific as Joe Keller, the wartime businessman who earned his fortune making aeroplane engines for America’s war machine.
Having done his bit, he is everyone’s favourite patriarch, full of jokes and joshing and love for the way of life his country fought so hard to protect. Yet everyone around him is less able to deny the tragedy of the past.
Marianne Jean-Baptiste as Joe’s wife Kate is more than merely haunted by the loss of their pilot son three years ago during the war. She is coiled with anger and will unleash it at anyone who suggests her boy is not coming home, including his brother Chris (played by an admirably measured Paapa Essiedu) who is sick of putting his life on hold, as is Anne (Hayley Squires) the dead man’s ex who Chris intends to marry.
Hove informs the unravelling of this uneasy status quo with a pulsing, cinematic soundscape. In two uninterrupted hours it peels back the secret crime behind Keller’s jovial mask. When it breaks, the crash is as massive as is the falling tree that heralds the beginning of the Keller family’s destruction.
There isn’t the same relentless momentum of Hove’s earlier Miller production of ten years ago. But you can’t blame something that is very good for not being great.
All My Sons
Wyndham’s Theatre
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