This revival of Arthur Miller’s slowly detonating study of illicit desire in a 1950s Italian-American household is advertised as a “timeless masterpiece” but the production, in many ways, appears a relic of that time.
There is much that creaks, from the expositional framing device of the lawyer as omniscient narrator to what seems like a dated portrait of working-class masculinity in crisis through the central figure of longshoreman Eddie Carbone, tormented by his niece Catherine’s romance with an illegal immigrant, Rodolpho, whom he harbours in his home.
Directed by Lindsay Posner with a spare, untampered purity, the production leans into its past world. It wavers for a while but comes out winning, mostly due to the terrific ensemble of actors, led by Dominic West, who breathe new life into these characters.
West makes Eddie more textured than a domestic tyrant at the start, subtly sending up his Neanderthal fragile masculinity so it is gruffly amicable. The humour of the play is brought out generally from lines such as Eddie’s warning to Catherine (Nia Towle) that “you’re walking wavy” to the comic edges of Rodolpho’s character, played with understated physical comedy from Callum Scott Howells, who has flecks of Ryan Gosling’s Ken. The kiss between Rodolpho and Eddie – which might be Eddie seeking proof of the younger man’s sexuality (“the guy ain’t right”) or an expression of Eddie’s own sublimated desire – lacks potency. But West ensures humanity so that Eddie’s growling insistence “I want my respect” and the final act of violence feel all the more tragic.
We see the family’s tenement block from inside and out on Peter McKintosh’s set, with only a symbolic dinner table at its centre. Where the production resonates most is in its portrait of the two illegal immigrants invited into Eddie’s home, with Marco (Pierro Niel-Mee) projecting desperate gratitude as a foil to Rodolpho’s more playful approach to this new life. There is a pervading climate of hostility toward these “submarines” that feels real and current. It buzzes outside the home, in the play’s warnings about immigrant officials, and inside it too through Eddie’s antipathy towards and suspicion of Rodolpho, whom he sees as an outsider threatening to “come out of the water and grab a girl”.
There is an immensely powerful scene between Rodolpho and Catherine in which the former is outraged by Eddie’s accusations that he is inveigling himself into the romance to gain citizenship. He makes clear the only thing that America offers him that his beloved home does not is work and refuses to be reduced to a grasping, rapacious figure. Despite the play’s period setting, it chimes, depressingly, with rightwing narratives of today.
Every actor shines as brightly as West. There is an insightful performance from Kate Fleetwood as Eddie’s wife, Beatrice, who feels the house’s Freudian buzz, and Towle is just as compelling as Catherine, full of girlish exuberance but slowly becoming her own woman.
At Theatre Royal Haymarket, London, until 3 August
