A Bridge Not Far Enough

From the Theater Vault Dept.: After seeing an incredible performance by Michael Fischetti in “Glengarry Glen Ross” at Capital Rep the season before, I was eager to see what he’d do with the challenging lead in “A View from the Bridge.” He did excellently, but the rest of the production seemed a little limp, almost as if the production team wasn’t prepared to fully commit to the play’s place and time. Here’s what I wrote about it, taking us back to a chilly night in 1987.

                                                                                                    

THE BRIDGE IN QUESTION is one of those gloriously metaphorical items that spans the literal and metaphysical: it joins boroughs, countries; it joins aspects of law and aspects of morality.

Arthur Miller wrote “A View from the Bridge” in 1955 as a one-acter and expanded it when it proved successful. As with so much of the playwright's work, there is a strong central character in the process of conflict and self-discovery who nevertheless is doomed.

Michael Fischetti and Sully Boyer

With Eddie Carbone, it is a conflict between loyalty and sexual feeling that brings him down. He is attracted to his just-come-of-age niece; he also is attracted to the man she wants to marry.

This is in Brooklyn of the late '40s, so Eddie, a longshoreman, doesn't have a very sophisticated language with which to express his varied feelings, never mind that he's dealing with such great taboos.

Such subjects are now the stuff of television soap operas, so today there isn’t a lot of shock value in Eddie’s dilemma. What keeps a production of “Bridge” interesting are rich portraits of Eddie, his friends and family.

The current Capital Rep production, co-produced with three other upstate professional theaters, has a splendid cast with the ability to do just that. Michael Fischetti is Eddie, a man whose voice reveals his Italian heritage even as he speaks the language of the docks. Jennifer Van Dyck is almost too good to be true as Catherine, pain raging within her as she moves about the stage in a physical hush, trying to be not too attractive, in emulation of her Aunt Beatrice. But Beatrice (Diane Martella) is herself trying to rebel against Eddie’s dominance, and encourages the younger woman to get free.

Into the household come two Italian ship-jumpers whom Eddie agrees to hide. Rafael Ferrer and Lawrence Palmisano speak astonishingly good English, poetically colored with dialect. Palmisano, as the elder brother Marco, is a family man, sending money back to a wife and kids; Ferrer’s Rodolpho wants to adopt America. They parallel the relationship between the women, and the inevitable pairing off of Rodolpho and Catherine sets Eddie’s tragedy ablaze.

The story is framed by comments from an attorney, Mr. Alfieri, who wrestles with his own applications of law even as he tries to cool Eddie’s passion with a reason he himself has trouble believing. Sully Boyar is an avuncular figure as the lawyer. His performance may be a shade too calm for the production, however; on opening night, what should have been a crescendo of tension was broken into segments that lost energy from event to event.

The company’s most challenging task is in conveying the sense of panic Eddie feels and inspires in those around him as he is victimized by his sexuality. We’ve come far enough to call a homosexual a homosexual, but Eddie’s problems nevertheless have a compelling immediacy. A View from the Bridge continues through Feb. 1.

A View From the Bridge
Directed by Tony Giordano
Capital Repertory Company

– Metroland Magazine, 8 January 1987