Associate director at York Theatre Royal Juliet Forster directs Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge which transfers to Northampton’s Royal and Derngate after opening in York.
Talking about the play, she said, “it’s arguably one of the best plays ever written, an extraordinary text and a brilliant, unforgettable experience for an audience. It’s a play that I love.
“Arthur Miller says ‘the mind of Eddie Carbone is not comprehensible apart from its relation to his neighbourhood, his fellow workers, his social situation. His self-esteem depends upon their estimate of him and his value created largely by his fidelity to the code of his culture.’ It’s important for me that we create a large living, breathing, feeling community on stage around him, drawing on the skills of local community actors.”
The play is set in 1950s New York. Longshoreman Eddie Carbone lives a life of seeming stability with his wife and niece in a tight-knit, immigrant community bound by moral codes of justice and honour. But the surprise arrival of his wife’s Sicilian cousins unravels all that they have built together as the young men search out work, wealth and love.
Forster added, “I’m really looking forward to exploring the questions raised in the play around trust in a community, betrayal, social taboos and attitudes to the law.”
A View from the Bridge is at Royal and Derngate from Tuesday 15 until Saturday 26 October.