Eddie (Gavin Rutherford) seated in the foreground. Rodolpho (Paul Waggott) and Catherine (Acushla-Tara Sutton) standing in the background.

Eddie and his wife Beat­rice live with Beat­rice’s dead-sis­ter’s daugh­ter, Cather­ine in Brook­lyn, New York. Beat­rice’s two cousins, Mar­co and Rodolpho, are com­ing into the coun­try (ille­gal­ly) to stay with them in order to earn mon­ey to send back to Italy.  Cather­ine and Rodolpho get on real­ly well. Eddie is sus­pi­cious of Rodolpho’s motives. Is he real­ly into Cather­ine? Or is he just after a green-card?

Susan Wil­son directs a crack­ing pro­duc­tion of Arthur Miller’s A view from the bridge. Excel­lent per­for­mances from Gavin Ruther­ford (Eddie) and Acush­la-Tara Sut­ton (Cather­ine) gives the show a strong cen­tre for the oth­er char­ac­ters to move around. Ruther­ford plays the patri­arch Eddie as a strong, blunt, straight talk­ing man. His agi­ta­tion is pal­pa­ble as Eddie’s des­per­ate attempts to pro­tect his step-daugh­ter lead him to a lawyer. Sut­ton is sweet­ly naive as Cather­ine when estab­lish­ing her rela­tion­ship to Eddie and Beat­rice. They are strong­ly sup­port­ed by the oth­er cast mem­bers. Jude Gib­son is a lov­ing and slight­ly envi­ous wife. Paul Wag­gott is sub­tly con­fronta­tion­al as Rodolpho, while Alex Greig as Mar­co is charm­ing­ly sto­ic. Christo­pher Brougham’s lawyer Alfieri sets the scene and clos­es the play. He gives us a sense that some­thing ter­ri­ble, yet inevitable is going to hap­pen. It’s pret­ty good to see stu­dents from Whitireia on the stage in this pro­fes­sion­al pro­duc­tion as well. They will be learn­ing a lot from this expe­ri­enced cast and crew while wan­der­ing around John Hodgkins’ mar­velous mul­ti-lev­el set which is nice­ly lit by Mar­cus McShane.

Go and see this clas­sic Amer­i­can play.