A View From The Bridge, one of Arthur Miller’s most popular plays, has been on Broadway four times before, most recently just five years ago, starring Liev Schreiber and Scarlett Johansson in an impressive Broadway debut. But it’s safe to say that the new View, at the Lyceum, is unlike any staged before, mostly for better, but also a bit for worse. The intense performance by Mark Strong, making his Broadway debut, supported by the rest of the outstanding cast, makes this View worth viewing, but the powerful acting is not what makes this production distinct from previous versions. It’s the direction by Ivo van Hove….The director has staged this story with brutal abstraction, shorn of period details, props and backdrops, and even of shoes: All the actors are barefoot.

Full review at DC Theatre Scene

Click on any photograph by Jan Versweyveld to see it enlarged.

A View from the Bridge

When Phoebe Fox as Catherine jumps into the arms of Mark Strong as Eddie Carbone, we are struck by several things at once — how much bigger he is than she; how childish she acts; how somehow inappropriate their physical interaction seems. In that early moment in A View from the Bridge, we are get a succinct foreshadowing of the tragedy that is at the heart of Arthur Miller’s play — Eddie’s lack of awareness of his attraction to his surrogate daughter.