Barry Coulter
Down on the waterfront, the light is always murky, and you got to keep one eye looking over your shoulder — sometimes even in your own home.
Director Paul Kershaw has taken the theatre space of the Studio Stage Door and transformed it into the mean streets of Redhook, in Cranbrook Community Theatre’s latest presentation, Arthur Miller’s dark drama “A View From the Bridge.” The play looks at 1950s tenement living, a community existing on the fringes of society, and what happens to values in conflict.
“View From A Bridge” is anchored by a strong cast, and led by Dave Prinn as Eddie Carbone, a longshoreman and prominent figure in the Italian-American community of Redhook, Brooklyn, where he lives with his wife Beatrice (Michelle McCue) and niece Catherine (Jelena Jensen), whom he and ‘Bea’ have raised like a daughter.
Carbone’s world is changing, although he is only aware that his niece, with whom he has a jealous obsession, has grown up and is seeking to spread her wings in a new secretarial job.
The family provides a safe house for “submarines” — illegal immigrants — and through this portal from the Old World to the New Beatrice’s cousins Marco (Trevor Lundy)and Rodolpho (Carter Gulseth) arrive, smuggled over from Italy.
Marco seems in keeping with the codes of manhood that Carbone follows, but Rodolpho sings, dances and makes dresses for Catherine, and Carbone’s brooding suspicion of him flares up when Rudolpho and Catherine start going out.
Carbone’s smouldering angers and rigid adherence to his set ways put “View From The Bridge” on a course of tragedy.
The fine cast includes Barry Borgstrom as the lawyer Alfieri, who acts as narrator and “bridge” between two worlds.
Landon Elliott and David Booth are friends and colleagues of Carbone on the docks.
Michael Prestwich and Jack Lindquist are immigration officers, while Sean Cloarec, Tace Bradwell and Cedar Gross are submarines — Louis Saule is the sea pilot who smuggles them through the streets to the safe house.
Arthur Miller’s “View From The Bridge” opened Saturday, Oct. 28, and runs Nov. 1-4 and 8-11 at the Studio Stage Door.