Customer Reviews

A View from the Bridge / All My Sons (Penguin Modern Classics)

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

A View From the Bridge is a compelling and exciting drama that delves into such issues as incest, manliness and justice. It's the story of Eddie, an illiterate longshoreman, and his anger towards his niece's affection for an illegal immigrant staying in his house. The complicated relationships between these and many other characters in the play makes A View From the Bridge a truly great piece of theatre. The play has the ingredients of a traditional Greek tragedy, complete with Alfieri, a narrator that fulfils the same purpose as Sophocles's chorus from his plays about Oedipus and Antigone. It's a really good read and unravels like a great page-turner.

The structure of the play is uncomplicatad. The play is in two acts but within the acts there are easily defined divisions which are controlled by Alfieri. Alfieri is essential to the structure of the play. He opens and closes the play. He is Arthur Miller's mouthpiece and he moves the action fluidly. Catherine is a young lady who, it seems, as a result of her mother's death is living with her aunt, Beatrice, and Beatice's husband, Eddie. Eddie and Catherine have developed a close family relationship. The credibility of the relationship throughout the play is inceasingly questionable. Eddie is fatherlike in Catherine's eyes. In the first conversation between them Catherine looks for Eddie's approval that she looks good.She behaves almost in a coquettish manner to Eddie BUT this is not calculated. She sees him as a loving father figure. Eddie's obsessive attention to her physical appearance is realized when he asks her to turn around so he can see in her back. His intensions here are questionable. Is he attracted or is just parental pride? Eddie realises this from the beginning. Perhaps he feels that for the responsility he has taken, to support Catherine, he deserves a reward. The reward he wants(Catherine) is too big, and which if he got would be unnatural and ridiculous. Beatrice notices the relationship but her unwillingness to speak out makes her part of the problem. Eddie uses an emotional approach which in sensitive to Catherine's emotions. He suggests that all he is doing is looking out for her interests. He uses her inexperience to denunciate her arguements. Catherine shows her interests in Rodolpho's physical appearance. Eddie subjugates her. His intensions to show power dominate his actions. Rodolpho speech is lively and descriptive if a little frivolous. Catherine seems to be attracted to his different style which contrasts to Eddie's simple, normal style. Eddie is antagonistic towards Rodolpho because he is jealous of the obvious chemistry between the youngsters. Eddie unsuccessfully does his atmost to vilify Rodolpho. He sees him as a homosexual who is using Catherine to get an American passport. Catherine is attempting to be independent but she can't stand up to Eddie. She seems to be looking for attention again but Eddie's tension and his use of passionate words bring us to question his motives.

Arthur Miller often allows the reader to have difficulty identifying with a character, while empathizing with several characters. This is the case in "A View from a Bridge." When the story ends in tragedy, it is no surprise that the reader is made to question some aspect of American society.

In this play, Eddie inherits the duty of raising his niece since the death of his sister. When cousins who are illegal immigrants come to stay with the family, it is a challenge to Eddie's role as father figure. The character and integrity of Rodolpho the younger immigrant is called in to question as he begins a relationship with Eddie's niece Catherine. Is he only marrying her to obtain American citizenship? Is he too much of a free spirit with his singing and dress-making skills? In Eddie's eyes, he certainly not the proper suiter he expected for Catherine. With a wedding on the horizon, Eddie takes his only real option to prevent the marriage. He calls immigration. The final confrontation between Rodolpho and Eddie ends in tragedy, but the character flaws in both men make it difficult to sympathize with either.

The story raises questions of the bonds of family as well as the changing conditions of immigration into America. The fact that the play makes the reader think about social conditions is a reflecion of the quality of the play. It is from the high standard readers hold an Arthur Miller play to.

This is a tightly woven story that packs a punch in just a few pages. In fact, it was short enough that I thought there was no way to resolve the conflicts that left me hanging until the last few pages. Sure enough, Miller effectively tied up loose ends and still managed to surprise me despite ending in a similar fashion to what most would predict.

The play is about an uncle's overprotective nature, which runs so deeply as to be too close for comfort, and the fact that no one would ever be good enough for the niece living in his home. The take home message is about letting go of something you love, as well as swallowing your pride, which ultimately leads to the downfall of at least two of the characters. Eddie's failure to cut his losses and admit he was wrong left him proud but dead.

The setting gives a cool, albeit tiny, insight into what the New York waterfront must have felt like long ago, and the narration (through the eyes of the lawyer from whom Eddie sought advice) is a neat touch.

I have loved A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE since the first time I read it, three years ago. It is a tautly written, exciting drama in which one can practically see the tragic end coming, "step by step, like a dark figure walking down a hall toward a certain door" (in the words of Alfieri, the lawyer in the play). But as well as the play "reads," it is absolutely ELECTRIFYING when seen on stage -- as I found out just yesterday, when I saw a production of it. The actor who played Eddie Carbone, the protagonist, made the character very sympathetic; as a result, the play's ending was truly tragic. Read A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE, but also try to see a production of it, if you possibly can. I will admit, though, that it is not performed that often -- not nearly as often as it deserves to be.

Well, after the reading the above reviews I have to say that I was compelled to write a review since I think this exsquisite piece of literature is one of the most moving plays I have ever read. A tale of wrenching and impossible desire, it exposes the danger of the subconscious and within that is a true love story. Arthur Miller has once again brilliantly created a complex and emotionally torturted man in Eddie.

The great play writer Arthur Miller had the idea for "A View From The Bridge" when he was doing research on a longshoreman who was executed by the mob for attempting to revolt against union. He heard a story about another man who denounced his relatives to the Immigration Bureau. The play is not only about this fact, but also concerning on tense familiar and social relationships, and also there is a sexual identity subtext.

Although "A View from the Bridge" is not as famous or as good as "The Crucible" or "Death of a Salesman", it is an interesting piece since its characters are so well developed. One of the main themes in this play is the `naming names'. Just like Miller himself, the main character Eddie Carbone, had the chance of denouncing his friends. Unlike his character, the writer when inquired about his supposed communist friends chose to be loyal to them.

But certainly, the main symbol in the play is Brooklyn Bridge, that means, among other things, pathway of opportunity to Manhattan and also the linkage between American and Italian cultures. And the community where the play is set is very close to this bridge. Miller has created again some effective characters in this play, who are forced to face problematic situations. They may not always succeed, but the writer does - at least most of the time.

A awe-inspiring view of Brooklyn in the 1950's. The storyline was very believable as it displayed the passion and anger of Sicilian society. Marco's honesty and physical strength against the insanity and perverted thoughts of Eddie towards Catherine, was the perfect ending to a intricate struggle of loyalty versus human integrity.

Either I got a misprinted copy or they have a terrible editor. It starts off with A View from the Bridge but becomes Room Service by Allen Boretz at page 18. It turns back into AVFTB at the start of the second act, but since pages 18-44 are filled with Room Service, I cannot say anything content-wise. If anyone else has had this problem, then there was an obvious mass misprint.

What really kills this recording is the Guy Noire style narrator.

Garrison Keillor kills this recording.

We keep waiting for the wry and subtle in-jokes, and they fail to come

What we get is real life.
Guy Noire only gets in the way.

This recording arrived in its box as ordered, used. I was surprised not to find a lengthy brochure inside. I highly recommend you also get the play as written by Miller, perhaps at A View From the Bridge, Arthur Miller, I do not know, but I wish I had read the play along with hearing this live recording, as the issues raised in this play are crucial for where we are today.

We are all immigrants and the grandchildren of immigrants, except for instance the Cherokee and the Sioux, etc. By what moral right may we now deny these who come as ew ourselves did?

This play explores the nature of the immigrant, and the illegal one, and the criminal networks which hold them enslaved, as they are today, and the criminal employers who need pay them nothing, as they are illegal. For this reason they are labelled illegal, to pay them nothing.

This play is not The Crucible as other reviewers wish. It is not Willy Loman, although issues of hidden sexual diversity may also find tracing.

It is a play about poor immigrants, some illegal. We need read it today.

Yet this recording may well not entirely provide a clear View from the Bridge.

Apparently there was some adaptation in order to make it a purely oral reading, and thus the dominance of the Guy Noire character (a lawyer) who even provides descriptions of actions on stage as one would not hear in the theatre except in certain productions of Bertolt Brecht. All the same it was not clear to me just what Ed O'Neill was doing with Marco in the end. For all we could tell from the sighs they might have been, well, dancing.

And that is the second distractor after Guy Noire: Ed O'Neill. We all know and despise Ed O'Neill from Married with Children - The Complete First Season, the hand in pants Al Bundy character is unshakable and the voice is clearly his here, despite the harder Brooklyn edge.

It is hard to come to love Al Bundy, and it is hard for us here to identify enough with Ed's character to care in the end. We are thus tragically left with melodrama (reinforced by Guy Noire) rather than tragedy, bathos rather than pathos.

And that is a shame. This play has much to tell us now today in so many ways.

When we hear the original Caedmon recording of Death of a Salesman with Lee J. Cobb and Dustin Hoffman we do not need audio-visual clues telling us what we are not seeing, nor an Our Town type telling us what we ought to be seeing. Here I find the omnipresent, omniscient, ironic Guy Noire character intrusive and drawing from the direct drama, and wonder how much the original play has been adapted for this recording. Perhaps none. Perhaps too much. I need to read the book.

I think people in other reviews have not heard this play clearly enough, but through the lens of other works by Miller. Read this work on its own. Do not read King Lear as if it were Romeo and Juliet. This work stands strongly on its own. We need read it now.

We need open our arms to the huddled masses, as our Liberty statue promises. We need destroy the economic injustice which enslaves millions in our own homeland to the profit of a superfluously wealthy few, who when things fall apart get even more trillions thrown their way.

Hear the subtext of this play. It preaches equality. It preaches justice. It preaches love. It preaches equal opportunity. It preaches America.

Read the play. And then try this recording by the LA Theatre Works. You might even come to understand Al Bundy as the complex Eddie Carbone.