A melting pot of conversations about gender, power, immigration and justice
For her first show at Glasgow’s Tron Theatre as Artistic Director, Jemima Levick has chosen a classic play with modern relevance – a melting pot of conversations about gender, power, immigration and justice. The play follows longshoreman Eddie, who slowly builds in anger and paranoia as his young niece, raised as his daughter, falls in love with his wife’s cousin, an illegal immigrant from Italy living with the family until he gets on his feet. The play is filled with the creeping dread of his unspeakable obsession, everyone trying their hardest not to call it out explicitly but unable to ignore the inevitable end result.
That is, in the first act. As someone who has never seen or read A View from the Bridge, the second act felt like a massive disservice to what was built up in act 1. It almost feels like Miller couldn’t face the reality of what he was building to, and couldn’t give his female characters the agency required to make an impact on the story, so instead he reduced the climax of the play to a pissing match between two men. This sense of anticlimax wasn’t helped by the fight direction of the final scene, which sped by so quickly that it felt like they needed to get the audience out of the building before the last train home.
My quibbles with Miller’s text aside, there is a lot to admire about this production. Mark Holgate plays Eddie with a beautiful depth, especially since his character is so unwilling to acknowledge his own inner life. He can turn in an instant from someone jovial and friendly to an angry misogynist. Nicole Cooper also gives an engaging turn as Beatrice, Eddie’s wife who battles between her blaming her niece for leading her husband astray, and the guilt that she even dares to blame her niece at all.
The play has also been shifted into a more modern era, to allow the focus to shift more onto the current conversations around immigration both in America and in Glasgow today. Especially after we collectively watched the attempted raid in Kenmure Street in 2021, and the riots across the UK last year, when we watch Eddie call immigration on his family in the modern ers it truly hits home how low he has sunk. However, the stage design representing this change came across as a little boring and cheap – a shipping container without personality that looms over the stage, but has nothing that interesting to say.
This play has so much to say and Levick’s version does it justice, despite some flaws and pacing issues in the second act. I hope Levick will continue to bring such engaging, topical and powerful stories to the stage of the Tron throughout her tenure.