First up drama: A View from the Bridge

I know, an Arthur Miller revival on Broadway is pretty much a given. Sooner or later a salesman will die, all my sons will gather, a crucible will ignite and a new generation of theatergoers will check out the view from the bridge. But as long as directors get the casting right, this is a big fat plus for lovers of great American literature. After all, Miller is the sounding board for the Everyman/woman in all of us, even if the decade unraveling onstage is long gone.

And so we have the edition, a revival of Miller's A View from the Bridge currently running at the Cort Theatre. The NY Time's make-or-break-critic Ben Brantley has already given it a bunch of techno color praise, as have other high profile reviewers around town. They do not exaggerate. This is a production to be cherished on many levels, starting with Gregory Mosher's deft directorial take that subtly escorts us from the mundane to the tragic.

 High Point: The three key characters:

Eddie Carbone (Liev Schreiber) - 1950's Brooklyn longshoreman sitting on a hand grenade of daily grind and misshapen desire. One of American theatre's most finely-tuned talents, Schreiber fleshes out Eddie's humanity while whittling away at the raw nerve positioned just beneath the skin. We're talking Tony here. 

Beatrice Carbone (Jessica Hecht) - Blue-collar housewife grappling with reality, neglect and the sort of womanly intuition that breaks hearts. Hecht (a recent casualty of the  excellent, albeit truncated, Broadway run of Brighton Beach Memoirs), nails it all... the accent, the fear, the longing. Her pragmatic counterpoint to Eddie's testosterone-driving ego is, ultimately, the soul of the show.

Catherine (Scarlett Johansson) - Eddie's 17-year-old niece who has lived with the couple since childhood and is tentatively crossing the line to adulthood. With her trademark strawberry blonde hidden under a dark wig, Johannson's movie star persona eluded most of the audience for her first several minutes onstage. Understated, with a lovely stage presence and a flawless chemistry with Hecht and Schreiber, the actress is more than a little impressive in her Broadway debut.

The last production of View took place 12 years ago and was amazing in its own right - Anthony LaPaglia, Allison Janney and the late Brittany Murphy. A friend recently suggested her memories of that version were so vivid and wonderful she thought she would skip this one.

She would be wrong... very wrong... to do so. I convinced her to take the leap. I hope I've done the same for you.

Second up: A Sweet Deal "On the House"

Anyone wishing to bang the buck boldly need only log onto nycgo.com/onthehouse, an email hotline launched just this week to give theatergoers a substantial break during the month of February.

The Skinny: From February 8^th through the 28^th, the pro-active tourism/marketing arm of the city NYC & Company, is once again offering On the House, a three-week promotion making available two-for-one Off-Broadway theatre tickets for the following 25 Off-Broadway shows:  

A Lie of the Mind, Ages of the Moon, Avenue Q, Awesome 80s Prom, Candida, Circumcise Me, Clybourne Park, Equivocation, The Fantasticks, Fuerza Bruta: Look Up, The Gazillion Bubble Show, Happy Now?, MazelTov Cocktail, Measure for Measure, Mr. & Mrs. Fitch (with John Lithgow), Naked Boys Singing!, Perfect Crime, The Pride, The Scottsboro Boys, Signs of Life, STOMP, The Tempermentals, Top Secret: The Battle for the Pentagon Papers, Venus in Fur and Yank!

And while I haven't seen every production listed above (although I might take this as a cue to fill in the gaps) I do have my favorites, including Avenue Q, Fuerza Bruta and a show I just caught last week, Venus in Fur, a tantalizingly sexual two-person dark comedy by one of my favorite playwrights, David Ives. It also happens to be directed by multi-award winner Walter Bobbie, a frequent Ives collaborator. For the record, the two relative newcomers who make up the cast, Nina Arianda and Wes Bentley, are exceptional. Ms. Arianda in particular is an actor with a potentially brilliant future ahead -- you'll want to say you saw her here first! 

Posted on January 27, 2010 - by