A View From the Bridge: An American tragedy

By Gwendolyn Rice, GwendolynRice.com

August 30, 2017

A New York lawyer who worked with longshoremen in the 1950s once told a tragic, true story of illegal immigrants, betrayed loyalties, and the corrupted love between a good-as-he-had-to-be, hardworking Italian-American man and his niece. Fortunately for us, the lawyer was talking to renowned American dramatist Arthur Miller, who then turned the story into the play A View from the Bridge. Onstage in American Players Theatre’s Touchstone through October 22, it is a haunting tragedy of Greek proportions, deftly directed by Tim Ocel and featuring some of the best performances of the season at APT.

At the center of the story is the flawed hero Eddie Carbone, played by Jim DeVita. A complicated man, he has poured every ounce of his strength into decades of loading and unloading cargo on the docks in order to provide for his family. In particular he hopes that his orphaned niece Catherine (a buoyant, then brittle Melisa Pereyra) has a chance at a better life. But the love he feels for his would-be daughter has grown into something grotesque as she’s grown into a beautiful young woman. Eddie struggles with impulses to keep her safe that morph into a darker need to keep her for himself.

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