In 2014 Ivo van Hove’s Young Vic staging of Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge drew comparisons to monumental Greek drama. Lightning has struck twice with this magnificent, shuddering production of Miller’s 1946 play – it perfects the art of doing less for more effect and is performed at the same West End venue where its predecessor transferred.
Van Hove, known for giving the classics his own stamp, steps back here, it seems, letting the cast (and what a cast this is) not just inhabit their parts but somehow become them as if by magic. They articulate the devastating truths in this play about the corruptions of the American dream and the toxic inheritance handed down from fathers to sons. How relevant these truths seem today: it is as if Miller were speaking directly about now. A line can be drawn from the play’s themes of selling faulty equipment to government and the unaccountability of corrupt capitalist patriarchs to Trumpian facts and delusions, Grenfell and the Covid-era PPE scandal.
