A View from the Bridge

It’s Miller time at the Big Idea Theatre in Roseville. The relatively new theater is honoring Arthur Miller on the anniversary of the American playwright’s death by staging one of his lesser-known, but still powerful, plays.

A View from the Bridge is pure Miller, the master storyteller of the miserable everyday working man. In the same vein as Death of a Salesman and All My Sons, A View from the Bridge illuminates the human drama of the working-class anti-hero.

Written as a Greek tragedy complete with a narrator, the story centers on Eddie Carbone, a Brooklyn longshoreman embittered by life but graced with a loving wife, Beatrice, and an affectionate niece, Catherine. Overprotective Eddie raised Catherine and now does not want her to venture into the world. But the world comes to the Carbone household when two illegal-immigrant cousins from Italy upset the family’s teetering balance of power.

The play was written in 1955 and displays old-fashioned attitudes and gender roles alongside the timeless struggles of the average working stiff. It’s an impressive offering by Big Idea Theatre, established in 2003 and housed in Roseville’s old Polish American Community Hall. The company’s previous shows have been a mixed lot, both in subject matter and success, but this production showcases the theater’s ability to present thought-provoking material while offering up new local talent.

Most notable in the cast are Michael Flood as Eddie, Rachael Logsdon as Catherine and Rick Olson as Marco. Now if the theater could only do something about the poor acoustics from the old building’s high ceilings and creaking wooden floors.