VIEWPOINTS – Two timely revivals celebrate Arthur Miller’s centennial

Arthur Miller, one of our great and most-produced playwrights, was born on October 17, 1915 birth, and this year marks the centennial of his birth.  To commemorate this landmark, two timely Miller plays have been mounted are currently being performed on the boards in New York this fall. One production is a visionary and cathartic take on a well-worn play that simply can’t be missed. The other is a solid rendition of a rarely performed play that’s showing its age.

IMG_5136I first saw director Ivo van Hove’s devastating production of A View from the Bridge (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED) last year at the Young Vic in London. It left me speechless then, and it leaves me speechless now. If anything, the production is even more searing and potent here. Mr. van Hove, who has increasingly made a name for himself with his austere and hyper-emotive productions, has burst onto this New York theater season as somewhat of a rock star – earlier this fall, he staged Juliette Binoche as Antigone at BAM; he is also currently represented this season by Lazarus, the highly anticipated David Bowie musical now in previews at New York Theatre Workshop. He is also returning to Mr. Miller’s oeuvre to direct the Broadway revival of The Crucible later this season. However, I doubt you’ll see more effective work from the bold Belgian director than in this operatic intermission-less revival, which, by distilling the play to its bare essence (time and place are irrelevant in many of Mr. van Hove’s productions), unleashes a tidal wave of unmitigated and uncensored emotions and elevates and expands the events of the play to near mythic proportions. As a result, Eddie Carbone’s tragic fall from grace in this production has the inevitable force of a supernova and Mr. Miller’s themes of honor, sexuality, immigration, and responsibility have the urgency of a contemporary play. The cast is completely onboard with Mr. van Hove’s vision and is even sharper and more searing than when I saw the revival across the pond. Mark Strong as Eddie continues to be tremendous; he gives a multifaceted masterpiece of a performance that’s simultaneously sympathetic and monstrous. I wouldn’t be surprised if this turns out to be the performance this year.

IMG_5414Signature Theatre’s workmanlike and perfectly respectable revival of Incident at Vichy (RECOMMENDED) hits all the right buttons. However, unlike the current A View from the Bridge revival, this Incident at Vichy doesn’t manage to ascend to the dramatic peaks that it aspires to. Certainly, the well credentialed top-notch cast, which includes such stalwarts as Jonathan Hadary and Richard Thomas, can’t be faulted. Each actor in this fine ensemble tries to make the most of Mr. Miller’s eclectic, albeit mostly two dimensional, characters. This World War II-set play about a group of political detainees in Vichy, France is reminiscent of moralizing male-dominated plays like Twelve Angry Men. Like those other plays, Incident at Vichy by today’s standards seems a tad trite – situations that should be unbearable to watch now unfortunately feel somewhat stagey and clichéd. Although director Michael Wilson has done a commendable job of attempting to heighten the tension and realism of the play, he can’t fully camouflage the creakiness of this, one of Mr. Miller’s lesser plays.

 

A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE
Broadway, Play
Lyceum Theatre
1 hour, 55 minutes (without an intermission)
Through February 21

INCIDENT AT VICHY
Off-Broadway, Play
Signature Theatre
1 hour, 30 minutes (without an intermission)
Through December 20

Categories: Broadway, Off-Broadway, Theater

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