Arts & Life

A view from the audience

Drama enthusiasts around the Long Beach community received a cathartic debut performance of Arthur Miller’s modern classic, “A View from the Bridge,” Friday.

The play, directed by Cal State Long Beach alumnus Jeff Paul, was performed at the CSULB University Theater and sold out on its opening night. Paul takes note of Miller’s interpretation of the Aristotelian Greek tragedy in relation to the common man, and presents to the audience Eddie Carbon — a hard working longshoreman who lives in the Red Hook community near the Brooklyn Bridge with his wife Beatrice and their niece, Catherine.

The audience members sit and gaze up at the tremendous bridge set on stage as they wait patiently for the events that are to unfold. Spectators are silent as Alfieri — the community lawyer — delivers the prologue.

For all intents and purposes, Alfieri plays the role of the Greek chorus and comments on the action of the play periodically. Sporting a custom suit and a thick Sicilian accent, he forewarns us of the civil practices of the time and how the community has grown accustomed to “settle[ing] for half.”

This idea of settling being in reference to the characters’ cases, and the fact that they can not expect for their conflicts to be selfishly resolved. He moves from the stage and takes a view from the top of the bridge.

The characters take on their own “tragic flaw,” and Eddie’s is made blatantly evident early in the play; his unrequited and obsessive love for Catherine.

Miller’s take on the classic Aristotelian tragic flaw varies. Where a classic tragic hero is usually a man of great importance who makes a severe mistake, Miller’s deals with the common man and his unwillingness to relinquish his dignity under the scrutiny of what he appears to be unfair judgment. In the eyes of Miller’s tragic hero, his flaw is neither good nor bad. There is speculation over whether he is self-aware at all.

Eddie and Catherine’s tight embraces, as well as the nuances in his tone of voice when speaking with her, are made even more evident by the unease and discouragement in his wife Beatrice’s eyes — which seem to evoke self-reflection on Eddie’s part.

Her concerns with him and the grasp he has on Catherine is further complicated by the arrival of her two cousins, Marco and Rodolpho, who are immigrating to the United States from Italy in search for better work.

Marco is a hard working father of three who dreams of reuniting with his family, and his younger brother Rodolfo is eccentric and excited for his future in America. With the arrival of Beatrice’s kin we are reminded of what a “good” man Eddie is, saying himself that he is honored to house these men.

As a protagonist, Eddie Carbon shocks his audience. They laugh at his sarcastic remarks in regard to the two animated Italian brothers, especially comments laden with homophobic discourse.

This reviewer would like to note that, in addition to Eddie’s obvious longing for Catherine that is more evidently produced on stage, the semiotics involved with being gay (or what Eddie believes to be gay) or effeminate during the 1950’s are not subtle at all. Eddie makes various motions with his hands and arms indicative of effeminate behavior, and dramatically changes the pitches in his voice when speaking of Rodolpho. At the same time, Rodolpho and Catherine become romantically involved, which frustrates Eddie.

He latches on to the idea of Rodolpho being gay, or as he describes, “not right,” going on to explain to Beatrice and Alfieri about his behavior at work and his variegated skill set – which includes dress-making and cooking.

Through the assignment of these traits onto Rodolpho, the audience might take note of the way that gender is racialized, or rather, how race is gendered – in that the two foreigners are immediately questioned and judged by Eddie and his American co-workers. Likewise, the toxic masculinity that Marco and Eddie demonstrate becomes indicative of the way certain gendered behavior permeates different societies in the name of “family” or “love.”

If anyone had been unsure about the intensity and pervasiveness of Eddie’s feelings before the second act, those opinions came to a screeching halt in the the last scene as Eddie walks in on Rodolpho and Catherine.

He orders Rodolpho to move out immediately, but when the two protest Eddie takes up Catherine and drunkenly kisses her on the mouth — which the audience members themselves protested to in a sequence of guttural yelps.

In a fit of rage and eminent defeat, Eddie calls immigration patrol and reveals his own address, and the characters find themselves in an affair of tragic proportions.

We meet with Alfieri a couple more times, who once again insists on forgetting, on forgiving and letting go — or as he so eloquently puts it, “settling for half.” The characters of the play seem to have a mutual understanding of family, though they don’t always agree on the law and resolution, even if they can already guess what is to come.

We watch the tension of the final scene untangle, as a tired and beaten Eddie demands an apology from Marco, who in turn is ready to kill in the name of revenge for his family who will now starve.

The two engage; Eddie pulls a short knife from his pocket, and with one final embrace, he goes down and dies in Beatrice’s arms. The audience is silent, and listens as Alfieri mourns him. The juxtaposition of humor and seriousness in the play allows for the severity to be very effective.

While the play commits to Miller’s adaptation, it is interesting to note the way that the characters are manifested in a way that is — to this viewer — caricatured or exaggerated. The audience reaches catharsis, not because good or evil prevails, but because the characters themselves allow their most internal desires to be fully known.

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