Set in the Red Hook district of Brooklyn in the 1950s, Miller’s play gives us an intense family drama where a clash of social expectations risks a terrible tragedy.
Labour on the docks, loading and unloading ships, dominates the community. The director, Holly Race Roughan, opens the show with a short visual glimpse of men in grey jackets and trousers labouring as if under great weight as they carry chairs onto the almost empty stage. In the background can be heard the slow, ominous sound of a tolling bell and the low splash of water.
Slightly to one side of the stage hangs a swing upon which sits a young woman, her back to us. This will be a minimalist, slightly unsettling approach to the classic play. Alfieri (Nancy Crane), a lawyer, will be our guide during the performance, occasionally stepping forward to comment on the unfolding events.
We first meet the family at the centre of the play in an upbeat mood. Jonathan Slinger, as the character Eddie Carbone, returns from work to an affectionate family welcome from his niece Catherine, who immediately hugs him and sits him down while she gets him a coffee.
The news the family swap, on this occasion, seems to be one of hope and new beginnings. Catherine has been offered employment as a stenographer, which Eddie, fond and protective of Catherine, agrees to allow despite reservations.
He also has big news. He tells his wife Beatrice (Kirsty Bushell) that her Italian cousins have arrived in the country and will be coming to stay. He warns his family not to tell anyone since they are illegal immigrants.
Although the cousins Marco (Tommy Sim'aan) and Rodolpho (Luke Newberry) are brothers, they seem very different. Whereas Marco is incredibly serious, determined to work to earn money that will keep his starving family back in Italy alive, the blond-haired Rudolpho is light-hearted and keen to enjoy the new country. Catherine is quickly drawn to him, especially when he says he likes jazz and can sing "Paper Moon".
On the docks, he makes other workers laugh. This, along with his cooking and sewing at home, doesn’t quite chime with Eddie’s sense of masculinity.
The engaging cast gives a tight, impressive performance. There is a lyrical realism to the way characters speak.
Jonathan Slinger emphasises the change in Eddie’s manner, from an early gentle humour to a later stark and gloomy resentment with his mouth turned dramatically into a huge 'n' shape, his words almost dripping with hostility for Rudolpho.
Rachelle Diedericks also transforms Catherine from a giggling teenager into a reflective woman who tells Rudolpho that she knows “a lot more than people think I know.”
There is an epic quality to the unfolding crisis, one that is highly personal to the family at the same time as echoing an America traumatised by the divisions and betrayals of the McCarthy witchhunts.