Devil in the Flesh Getting Married Is to Report the Cousins to the Immigration Bureau

When Catherine falls in love with one the theatre of the two illegal immigrants that they put up—cousins from the Old Coun- try—Eddie’s only way to keep her from devil in the flesh getting married is to report the cousins to the Immigration Bureau. By drop- Arthur Miller and Noël Coward on acting out. ping the dime, Eddie betrays his wife, his niece, his relatives, himself, and, by BY John LAHR extension, his entire tribe. The story’s symmetry is elemental and terrifying; it hurtles to its conclusion, propelled by Schreiber’s uncanny, incandescent performance. Saturnine and strapping, Eddie en- ters in a cloth cap and an overcoat as rumpled as the world he inhabits. He is driven by feelings that he can neither fathom nor control, and which he hides beneath a show of paternal concern. “Listen, you been givin’ me the willies the way you walk down the street, I mean it,” he tells his curvaceous niece, taking in her hourglass figure from the comfort of his easy chair. “Catherine, I don’t want to be a pest, but I’m tellin’ you you’re walkin’ wavy.” Of the many gifts that Schreiber brings to the role— a swift mind, a pitch-perfect ear for the sludge of the demotic, a reservoir of re- strained aggression, an ability to listen—the most important, it seems to me, is a sense of his own unresolved na- ture, an inchoate longing that makes him a perfect emotional fit for Eddie. There’s a loneliness and an agitation in Schreiber that are at odds with his tech- nical command; this combination of fragility and force makes him seem both mysterious and dangerous, and there- fore compelling to watch. As Catherine, Johansson is a superb he revival of Arthur Miller’s 1955 ward side of the Brooklyn Bridge. “This object for Schreiber’s ambivalent desire. play “A View from the Bridge” is the gullet of New York swallowing In a robin’s-egg-blue sweater and a form- (deftlyT directed by Gregory Mosher, at the tonnage of the world,” Alfieri (the fitting gray skirt, she glows with ripe- the Cort) is a singular astonishment: a compelling Michael Cristofer), a law- ness and an alertness to life. The top kind of theatrical lightning bolt that yer, who serves as a kind of chorus for student in her high-school graduating sizzles and startles at the same time, il- the tragic tale, says at the opening. He class, Catherine, in the opening scene, luminating the poetry in the play’s adds, “I am inclined to notice the ruins gets word that she has been offered a prose and the subtlety in its stream- in things, perhaps because I was born in fifty-dollar-a-week job at a local plumb- lined construction. “A View from the Italy.” The ruin in question is the longing company. Eddie, who has bigger Bridge” may not be Miller’s best play, shoreman Eddie Carbone (Liev Schrei- dreams for her, balks at the idea, before but this is one of the best productions ber), a palooka with no purchase on lan- finally conceding. “You wanna go to of his work that I’ve ever seen. guage or on his own psyche, who is work, heh, Madonna?” he says. “All In John Lee Beatty’s moody set, the destroyed by his unexamined desire for right, go to work.” Tearfully, Catherine action emerges from the chilly shadows his teen-age niece, Catherine (Scarlett throws herself into his arms, then bus- of the brown warrens of Red Hook, a Johansson), whom he and his wife, Be- tles happily around the threadbare working-class Italian enclave on the sea- atrice (Jessica Hecht), have raised. apartment. “I’m gonna buy all new dishes with my first pay!” she says. Cath- Scarlett Johansson and Liev Schreiber. Photograph by Francesco Carrozzini. erine’s world is opening up; Eddie’s is TNY—2010_02_01—PAGE 78—133SC.—LIVE ART r19275—CritiCAL PHOTOGRAPH TO BE WATCHED THROUGHOUT THE entire press run—#3 page—new foLIO ONLY closing down. Onstage, Johansson is me from his memory,” Alfieri says of Company production, at the American more resourceful than most of her film Eddie in an elegiac epilogue. “Not Airlines), is a figure of adoration. “Ev- roles have allowed her to be; her face is purely good, but himself purely, for he erybody worships me, it’s nauseating,” a detailed map of Catherine’s internal allowed himself to be wholly known.” In Essendine (the expert Victor Garber) climate—her loyalty, her gratitude, her both style and content, this weasel- says, descending in a silk dressing gown eagerness, her rebelliousness against worded speech seems to contradict the into a living room that looks like the Eddie’s petty tyrannies, and her insis- play: Eddie never allows himself to be Art Deco lobby of the Savoy. Essen- tence on her own desires, in particular known; he hides even from himself. So dine is a charm machine, trapped in for the happy-go-lucky blond cousin, what is going on? About whom is Miller the perpetual performance of his pub- Rodolpho (the excellent Morgan Spec- speaking? Miller had heard the Carbone lic self. “I’m always acting—watching tor), whom Eddie thinks is “a weird,” story from a longshoreman around myself go by,” he says. Through Essen- because he sings, cooks, and sews. 1950, when he was writing a screenplay dine, Coward teases his own public “You married too?” Catherine asks about the waterfront for Elia Kazan— persona and works its magic at the Rodolpho when he arrives with his which he withdrew from production in same time. The play sets up a series of brother, Marco (Corey Stoll), a family 1951, as the House Un-American Ac- challenges for Essendine’s equanimity, man with three children to feed. “I have tivities Committee hearings loomed. the most testing of which is the ap- no money to get married. I have a nice (Kazan testified, controversially, as a pearance at his door of an uncouth face, but no money,” Rodolpho says, friendly witness.) Miller thought of that critic and would-be playwright, the laughing. By the time he has finished murky first draft as a “probe”; he entitled well-named Roland Maule (Brooks singing a jazz version of “Paper Doll”— it “An Italian Tragedy” and put it away. Ashmanskas). “All you do with your “Leave him finish, it’s beautiful,” Cath- By the time he came back to the story, talent is wear dressing-gowns and erine says when Eddie tries to inter- in 1955, he had fallen in love with Mar- make witty remarks when you might rupt—Catherine is under his spell. At a ilyn Monroe, whom he would soon be really helping people, making them stroke, she is claimed by romance and marry; he was in the process of divorc- think! Making them feel,” the jittery Eddie by envy: when he first goes to see ing his wife of sixteen years and break- critic says. But no sooner has Essen- Alfieri about putting a stop to the rela- ing up their family. He was, he said, in dine doled out one of Coward’s famous tionship, he claims he’s been robbed “psychological country strange to me, “finger wags” than Maule, too, falls (“He . puts his dirty filthy hands on ugly and forbidding.” Betrayal had be- under Essendine’s spell. “You’re won- her like a goddam thief ”). “I’m tryin’ to come part of Miller’s story, as well as derful!” he says. Ashmanskas deserves bring out my thoughts here,” Eddie tells Kazan’s. In his movie “On the Water- some kind of award for scene-steal- Alfieri. In fact, everything in this ravish- front” (1954), Kazan attempted to jus- ing—he postures, minces, sprawls, and ing production demonstrates the oppo- tify his decision to testify by depicting caroms around the stage like a human site: Eddie staunchly refuses to think. an informer as a heroic victim of sys- pinball. His lampoon, however, is en- All the negative is projected into other temic corruption. “A View from the tirely out of keeping with the satire. people. Drunk at Christmas, Eddie ar- Bridge,” by contrast, depicts the in- “Every moment I’m near him I get rives home to find Rodolpho coming former as a deluded victimizer. “It would smoother and smoother,” Maule says, out of Catherine’s bedroom. In an elec- have been nice if Art, at this moment, though, from first entrance to last, trifying moment—superbly staged by while expressing the strong disapproval there is no transformation in Ashman- Mosher—the two men lunge at each he felt, had acknowledged some past skas’s zany behavior. other. Schreiber seems to throw the full friendship—or even written me a few The director, Nicholas Martin, who weight of his melancholy into the words, however condemnatory,” Kazan, is good at comedy, should have known tackle, which sends them sprawling who had directed the Broadway pro- better. He has brought together an ex- across the kitchen table. In front of ductions of Miller’s “All My Sons” and cellent ensemble and a handsome set Catherine, Eddie plants a taunting kiss “Death of a Salesman,” wrote in his au- by Alexander Dodge, but he has some- on Rodolpho’s lips. As Catherine tries tobiography. Instead, it seems to me, how lost faith in Coward’s underlying to pull him away, Eddie grabs her and Miller replied to Kazan from the stage. argument. For Coward, wit was an act kisses her hard on the mouth.

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