(David Jays’s article appeared in the Guardian, 10/15.)
A stark white box. A shower of blood. Arthur Miller plays do not conventionally look like Ivo Van Hove’s version of A View From the Bridge, but the non-naturalistic production triumphed at London’s Young Vic, winning three Olivier awards. Now it opens both on Broadway (where Russell Tovey joins the cast) and in Paris. Spare and unsparing, this is Miller for the 21st century.
It’s a sensation that almost didn’t happen, as the guardians of Arthur Miller’s estate were initially reluctant to let the innovative Belgian director meddle with a canonical text. “I confess, I was very apprehensive,” says the estate’s representative Patrick Herold of ICM in New York. “I had seen Van Hove’s productions of A Streetcar Named Desire and Hedda Gabler, and my personal belief was that he bent the plays to the point of breaking them.” Eventually he decided “as long as they don’t change any of the words, let them do it.”
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