Belgian director Ivo van Hove’s production of A View From the Bridge at the Young Vic back in 2014 remains a high watermark of contemporary theatre. Showers of blood-red rain, no set or props, Mark Strong and Nicola Walker going at it with a brutal level of intensity that didn’t let up until the final, tragic scenes. That was the last big production of Arthur Miller’s classic in London, and it did beg the question at the time: how on earth can anyone do this play justice again?
Lindsay Posner’s answer is this: go back to basics. Don’t try anything flashy. Let a few good actors deliver a really good script. His production – which ran in Bath earlier this year – is resolutely un-radical and sometimes threatens to be uninteresting. There’s a pretty nice set by Peter McKintosh, towering tenement walls looking like they might close in at any second, some skeletal chairs. A bit of mournful trumpet music between scenes. It’s really quite straightforward, and it could have sat on a stage at any point in the last 68 years.
