(Rosalyn Sulcas’s article appeared in The New York Times 6/24; via Pam Green.)
NORTHAMPTON, ENGLAND — The setting is Red Hook, Brooklyn, in the 1950s. The protagonist is an Italian immigrant who works as a longshoreman, a tragic hero who is also a working-class Everyman. The writer is Arthur Miller.
But the story being reincarnated for the stage here is not “A View From the Bridge,” one of the Miller classics receiving attention in the centenary of his birth. It’s “The Hook,” written as a screenplay in 1950, six years before “Bridge” and finally seeing the light for the first time this month at the Royal & Derngate Theater.
“As soon as I read it, it was clear to me that this was a script that spoke to the present moment,” said James Dacre, the artistic director of the theater, who has spearheaded the resuscitation of “The Hook,” which will transfer to the Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse next month.