October 9, 1955

'A View From the Bridge'

By BROOKS ATKINSON

or credible reasons Arthur Miller has deliberately under-written the two one-act plays that are now on stage at the Coronet. Believing in the dramatic values of the material, he has tried to let the plays tell their own stories.

The plays are "A Memory of Two Mondays" and "A View From the Bridge." The first takes place on the Manhattan side of the East River; the second, in Brooklyn. Although with some exceptions the same actors appear in both plays, the stories and the characters are not the same. But the plays are related in style and point of view. They sketch the lives of undistinguished, unheroic city workers, and both make a point of Mr. Miller's detachment.

"A Memory of Two Mondays" chronicles the daily life of the men and women who work in the shipping room of a dingy barren warehouse. Except for a few words of comment by two young men who have dreams of a better future, the drama is factual, composed of humdrum details. To this theatregoer, Mr. Miller's exercise in theatrical photography is flat and diffuse. Both the acting and the script are distractingly busy. Instead of evoking a poetic mood or setting up overtones of meaning, the play is swamped in its own flood of detail. Although it is under-written it gives the paradoxical impression of being overwritten, as though Mr. Miller had not reduced his material to the size of a one-act play.

But in the second play, "A View From the Bridge," has power and substance. It is based on a story Mr. Miller once heard in the Brooklyn neighborhood where he lives. Eddie, an ordinary longshoreman, in unconsciously in love with his niece-the daughter of his wife's dead sister. Early in the play two of his wife's Italian relatives are smuggled in and start to live furtively in Eddie's apartment. Catherine, the niece, falls in love with the younger Italian brother and proposes to marry him.

Eddie does not understand why he opposes the marriage so violently, nor do any of the other people who are involved. Searching around for a plausible reason, Eddie convinces himself that the young Italian is a homosexual whose only motive in marrying Catherine is a chance to legitimize his citizenship in America. But Eddie's real motive is the undeclared, unrecognized, unappeased hunger he has for himself. Like the heroes of Greek tragedy, he topples the whole house down on himself in the final catastrophe of a haunted play.

Mr. Miller understands the full tragic significance of this stark drama. Although he scrupulously underwrites the narrative, he introduces a neighborhood lawyer in a pool of light on one side of the stage to serve as commentator. Played compassionately by J. Carrol Naish, the lawyer analyzes Eddie's malady and puts it into human perspective. He also introduces a poetic strain by relating the Italian immigrants to the heroes of Roman history and the great myths of classical literature.

And Boris Aronson's brooding set serves much the same purpose. Although it faithfully defines the battered home in Red Hook where a longshoreman's family lives, it also suggests the majesty of Greek tragedy and the timeless seas of the ancient world where Mediterranean heroes sailed. In the main story Mr. Miller writes like an able reporter. But the dimensions of "A View From the Bridge" are those of imaginative drama. Mr. Miller is straining for all the altitudes he can reach, and he is an uncommonly tall man.

The story is vivid. He meets it head-on. His intimate knowledge of the people-their living habits, their principles, their idiom-is solid. What he has to say about life in Italy today makes an illuminating contrast that all the characters like to conjure with. Everything about "A View From the Bridge," rings true.

Yes something inhibits it from expressing the fullness of tragedy that the theme promises. And this is the place where Mr. Miller's principle of under-writing may have been ill-advised. If tragedy is to purge and terrify the audience, in the classical phrase, the characters must have size. Their fate must have spiritual significance. Aristotle limited tragic heroes to kings and queens and people renowned in other respects. If the modern world limited tragedy t such people, we would have very little to write about.

Eddie's deficiency as a tragic character is not a matter of social inferiority. It is simpler than that: Mr. Miller has not told us about him. Since the play begins in the middle of a tumultuous story, his background is dim and vague. On the basis of what we are told about him, Eddie is not an admirable person. He is mean. He is vicious toward the end, and he gets just about what he deserves. It is difficult to believe that fate has struck a decent human being a staggering blow that enlightens him about himself.

Nor are his wife and niece better portrayed. Their roots are shallow, too. The two Italian immigrants are the only well-defined characters in the central play. When Mr. Miller introduces them in the midst of a story that is already in motion, he is under the necessity of telling us who they are, where they come from and why. They are the only characters whom we can fully understand.

In manuscript, "A View From the Bridge" has more sweep and depth than it has on the stage. To read the script after seeing the play is to have second thoughts about the performance. Although Martin Ritt's staging is pictorially dramatic, the acting is taut and brittle. And if the texture of the play seems thin, it is partly because the actors intellectualize the characters and give us abstract ideas rather than human beings.

Everyone knows that Van Heflin is a stunning actor and Eddie is obviously a good part for him. But Van Heflin is so concerned with Eddie's inarticulate speech and other personal characteristics that he never relaxes or lets go with the familiar power until the last scene. Everyone knows that Eileen Heckart is a talented actress. But she plays Eddie's wife like a bundle of nerves. There is little warmth or domesticity in her portrait of an Italian homemaker.

Years ago the Group Theatre developed a school of acting that was brilliant and unbearable. All mind and nerves, it omitted flesh as something unworthy of educated people. The performance of Mr. Miller's play has some of that tense quality. "A View From the Bridge" needs flesh, not only because the characters are working people, but because Mr. Miller has written his play sparingly. Working in a mood of artistic austerity he has eliminated himself from both of these dramas. Many of us would be very happy to have as much of him as he can give.

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