[NEohioPAL] "A View from the Bridge" opens this week

[Jan Harcar]

 Preview - Thursday. March 24 at 7:30 p.m.
Opening - Friday, March 25 at 8 p.m.
Saturday, March 26 at 8 p.m.
Sunday, March 27 at 2:30 p.m.

Other performances:
Thursdays at 7:30 p.m.
Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m.
Sundays at 2:30 p.m.

Project STAGE performance: Wednesday, April 6 at 10 a.m. (for students and teachers) Special ticket price $5.

Weathervane Playhouse to Stage

'A View from the Bridge,' Arthur Miller's

Classic Drama about Truth, Deception and Love

 

Sean McConaha - Former Weathervane Staff Member
and Co-Founder of The Bang and the Clatter Theatre Company - 
Returns to Direct Weathervane Ensemble
 

Weathervane Playhouse's 2010-2011 Founders Theater season continues with A View from the Bridge - the powerful, affecting drama about deeply buried secrets of the heart - written by American theater legend Arthur Miller. See it live on stage between March 24 and April 10, 2011.

 

Set in the 1950s, A View from the Bridge tells the story of Eddie Carbone, a proud longshoreman who labors on the shipping docks in the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. Here, Eddie and his wife, Beatrice, eke out a humble living in tough times. Together, they have raised their young niece, Catherine, since her childhood - and they love her as dearly as they would their own child.

 

At the center of the play stands the complicated relationship between Eddie and Catherine. Still young but on the brink of womanhood, Catherine craves her uncle's approval even as she aspires to spread her fledgling wings and fly from the safety and comfort of her home. Eddie, however, is an articulate man who cannot begin to grasp the full extent of his deep love for his niece and foster daughter. Like a tragic hero from the plays of the ancient Greeks, Eddie remains blind to his faults as he grapples with the secrets locked inside his heart. 

 

Trouble ensues when the Carbone family agrees to house two illegal-immigrant cousins, who have traveled to America from Italy. When one of the cousins falls in love with Catherine and proposes marriage, Eddie erupts in a passionate, jealous rage that he can neither control nor comprehend. Will Eddie betray his family and report his illegal relatives to the government authorities? 

 

Against the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge, A View from the Bridge plays out as a modern-day Greek tragedy, illuminating master playwright Miller's themes of truth, deception and love. 

 

Weathervane Playhouse welcomes Sean McConaha the guest director of A View from the Bridge. Now a freelance director in Northeast Ohio, McConaha was the co-founding artistic director of The Bang and the Clatter Theatre Company, which performed in venues in both Akron and Cleveland between 2005 and 2010. He was also served as a member of the Weathervane Playhouse professional staff between 1998 and 2006 as its director of education.

 

The A View from the Bridge Cast and their Ohio Hometowns
 

Scott Shriner (of Akron) . Eddie Carbone

 

Alexandra Tlapa (of Kent). Catherine

 

Marie Smith (of Doylestown) . Beatrice

 

Alex Funk (of Akron ) . Rodolpho

 

Robert Showalter (of Akron) . Marco

 

Jason B. Maurer (of Akron) . Louis

 

Vince Richards (of Uniontown) . Alfieri

 

Mike Groom (of Barberton) . Mike

 

Daniel P. Cotter (of Rocky River) .Immigration Officer

 

Barbie Trotter (of Akron) . Mrs. Lipari

 

John Cotter (of Strongsville) . Mr. Lipari

 

The A View from the Bridge Backstage Team and their Ohio Hometowns

 

Stage Manager - Maryanne Arcuri Cotter (of Strongsville)

 

Costume Designer - Jasen J. Smith (of Akron)

 

Sound Designer - Michelle Adelina Conner (of Akron)

 

Properties Designer - Jonathon Hunter (of Akron)

 

Lighting Designer - David Ruggles (of Cuyahoga Falls)

 

Scenic Designer/Technical Director - Alan Scott Ferrall (of Cuyahoga Falls)

 

Assistant Technical Director - Kathy Kohl (of Akron)

 

About the Show's Director 
 

SEAN McCONAHA was the co-founding artistic director of The Bang and the Clatter Theatre Company, which performed in venues in both Akron and Cleveland between 2005 and 2010. He was a member of the Weathervane Playhouse professional staff from 1998 to 2006 as the director of education. He holds a bachelor's degree in theater performance and pre-law from West Virginia Wesleyan College and a Master of Arts in Theater from The University of Akron. His previous Weathervane Playhouse directorial credits include Romeo and Juliet (in 2000), The King of the Kosher Grocers (in 2000), The Chosen (in 2002) A Lesson Before Dying (in 2004), Angels in America: Millennium Approaches (in 2005) and Angels in America: Perestroika (in 2006).

 

About the Playwright

 

ARTHUR MILLER was born Oct. 17, 1915, in New York City. Until his death on Feb. 10, 2005, he remained one of the most prominent playwrights, authors, essayists and intellectuals in American letters. Frequently, Miller's dramatic characters wrestle with conflicts of power, and one of his over-arching themes is a responsibility to the self versus a responsibility to society at large. Among his many plays are All My Sons (1947), Death of a Salesman (1949), The Crucible (1953), A View from the Bridge (1955), After the Fall (1964), The Price (1968) and Broken Glass (1994). A winner of five Tony Awards during his lifetime, he was also awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1949 for Death of a Salesman and in 1984 received the Kennedy Center Honors.

 

About the Play's History

 

According to several accounts, playwright Arthur Miller drew his inspiration for A View from the Bridge from the true story of a story of a Brooklyn dockworker and union activist named Pete Panto (1911 - 1939), a man who dared to expose and speak out against his corrupt union bosses. Panto had worked the docks along Columbia Street in Brooklyn's Red Hook neighborhood (the very neighborhood in which Miller would eventually set his A View from the Bridge). As a consequence of his activism, Panto was killed (presumably by the organized-crime bosses he had vilified so openly). 

 

In the late 1940s, as Miller researched the story of Panto's life and the circumstances surrounding his death, he learned about another man who belonged to the International Longshoreman's Association. This longshoreman had betrayed two of his relatives, both of them brothers, by reporting their illegal status to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. In the story Miller heard, the dockworker became angered when one of the brothers announced an intention to marry the man's niece. As a result of ratting out his relatives, the man drew scorn from everyone in his tightly knit community, and he disappeared mysteriously. Rumors flew that one of the brothers had killed him.

 

Inspired by these real-life events along the Brooklyn shipping docks, Miller wrote a screenplay that he titled The Hook. In 1950, Miller and the theater and film director Elia Kazan (who had directed the first production of Miller's All My Sons), went out west to Hollywood to shop their screenplay to the movie studios. The men struck a deal with Columbia Pictures, but studio chief Harry Cohn insisted that he needed to show the script first to a union official and the FBI. In his memoir, Timebends: A Life (published in 1987), Miller recalled this meeting in Hollywood:

 

"Cohn wanted some changes; if I agreed, the film would be doable, he said. The main one was that the bad guys in the story, the union crooks and their gangster protectors, should be Communists.Roy Brewer, the head of all the Hollywood unions had been brought into the matter - by the FBI, presumably; he had read the script and said flatly that it was all a lie, that he was a personal friend of Joe Ryan, head of the International Longshoreman's Association, and that none of the practices I described took place on the piers. Finally, he informed Cohn that if the film was made he would pull all the projectionists across the country out on strike so that it could never be shown. The FBI, moreover, regarded it as a very dangerous story that might cause big trouble on the nation's waterfronts at a time when the Korean War was demanding an uninterrupted flow of men and material.''

 

Faced with this complaint of writing an "un-American" screenplay - and against the backdrop of the Communist-hunting efforts of the House Un-American Activities Committee - Miller and Kazan split over whether to agree to such changes. Miller refused to make any of the changes that Cohn wanted, and he withdrew the script. 

 

In the aftermath of Miller's refusal, he and Kazan parted ways creatively. Whereas Miller detested the politics of Hollywood, Kazan went in another direction altogether. In fact, two years later, when Kazan was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee, he testified that he had cut all of his ties with the Communist party after a brief affiliation 15 years earlier. Moreover, Kazan also "named names" of Communist party members and sympathizers. (Miller, meanwhile, would not be summoned to testify before HUAC until 1956; he refused to cooperate and name names, and consequently he was convicted of contempt of Congress.)

 

In the years following his HUAC testimony, Kazan continued to find work, acclaim and full acceptance in Hollywood: He revisited the setting of the Brooklyn shipping yards as the director of the 1954 Academy Award winner for best picture, On the Waterfront. Based on a series of articles in The New York Sun, but echoing the themes in the script that he and Miller had sold to Columbia Pictures, Kazan's celebrated film dealt with the subject of mob violence and union corruption.

 

In the aftermath of his split from Kazan, Miller encountered great critical acclaim for his 1953 play, The Crucible, whose depiction of the Salem witch trials of the late 1600s symbolized the modern-day "witch hunts" by the HUAC. Fresh off the success of The Crucible, Miller shifted gears and turned back to his screenplay for The Hook, re-shaping it into a one-act play that he entitled A View from the Bridge.

 

Miller conceived his play as a sort of modern-day Greek tragedy, and he wrote it completely in verse (similar to a play written by the ancient Greeks or Shakespeare). On Sept. 29, 1955, Miller's play opened at the Coronet Theatre on Broadway in New York City. The play was part of a double bill; with A View from the Bridge audiences also saw a second one-act play of Miller's entitled A Memory of Two Mondays. Martin Ritt directed both one-act plays. Van Heflin originated the role of Eddie Carbone, and Eileen Heckart originated the role of Beatrice Carbone. This double bill played on Broadway for a total of 149 performances, closing on Feb. 4, 1956.

 

In 1956, Miller dropped the play's verse dialogue and changed it to prose, re-shaping A View from the Bridge into a two-act drama (which is the version that has emerged as the standard one produced since that time). The first production of Miller's two-act version of A View from the Bridge opened in London in October 1956.

 

In 1962, Sidney Lumet directed a motion-picture adaptation of the play titled Vu du pont; produced with French and Italian financing but filmed mostly in New York City, Raf Vollone played Eddie, Maureen Stapleton played Beatrice and a young Carol Lawrence (Broadway's original Maria in West Side Story) played Catherine.

 

After the success of the London production, A View from the Bridge returned to its city of origin, New York City. On Jan. 28, 1965, an off-Broadway production of the play opened at the Sheridan Square Playhouse with Robert Duvall as Eddie Carbone, who won an Obie Award for his performance. Under the direction of Ulu Grosbard, this production was also assistant directed by a young man named Dustin Hoffman and ran for a total of 780 performances before closing on Dec. 11, 1966.

 

In the years since, A View from the Bridge has been revived on Broadway a number of times:

 

. A 1983 revival, directed by Arvin Brown, starred Tony Lo Bianco as Eddie. Opening on Feb. 3, 1983, it ran for 149 performances before closing on June 12, 1983, and was nominated for two Tony Awards. 

 

. In 1997, New York City's not-for-profit Roundabout Theatre Company transferred its production to a commercial run in a Broadway house. With Anthony LaPaglia as Eddie and Allison Janney as Beatrice, the production ran for 239 performances before closing on Aug. 30, 1998. The play won the 1998 Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play, and LaPaglia won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play. Actor Tony Danza eventually replaced LaPaglia as Eddie.

 

. In 2010, Liev Schreiber as Eddie and Scarlett Johansson as Catherine headlined a limited-run revival at the Cort Theatre on Broadway, playing for 81 performances before closing on April 4, 2010. The production was nominated for six Tony Awards, and Johansson won the 2010 Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play.

 

A View from the Bridge has also been adapted into an opera. With music by composer William Bolcom and a libretto by Arthur Miller, the opera version of A View from the Bridge received its world premiere at Lyric Opera of Chicago in 1999. Subsequent productions of the opera were staged by the Metropolitan Opera in 2002 and the Washington National Opera in 2007. 

 

In February 2005, show-biz publication Variety reported that film director Barry Levinson (Good Morning, Vietnam and Rain Men) would helm a big-screen movie adaptation of A View from the Bridge. At the time, Variety reported that actors Anthony LaPaglia, Scarlett Johansson and Frances McDormand were attached to the project. Since then, plans have changed. Variety reported in January 2011 that a new director, Robert Connolly, has been hired by the film's producer, actor LaPaglia (who still intends to reprise his Tony Award-winning role as Eddie). Also headlining the cast will be Vera Farmiga (Up in the Air) as Beatrice and Mia Wasikowska (Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland) as Catherine. Filming is scheduled to begin in June in Melbourne (Australia) and New York City. 

 

Weathervane's A View from the Bridge Ticket and Performance Information
 

A View from the Bridge plays on the Weathervane Playhouse Founders Theater stage between March 24 and April 10, 2011.

 

The low-cost preview performance is Thursday, March 24 at 7:30 p.m.; the official opening-night performance is Friday, March 25 at 8 p.m.

 

Between March 24 and April 10, 2011, performance days and times are Thursdays at 7:30 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2:30 p.m. In addition, a 10 a.m. performance will be offered on Wednesday, April 6; discounted tickets for school groups are available for this daytime performance.

 

Tickets for the March 24 preview performance only are $15 each. Tickets for performances after Feb. 3 are $21 each. 

 

$19 tickets for seniors and college students are available for Thursday and Sunday performances. Tickets for children (ages 17 or younger) are $17.00 at all performances after Feb. 3. Additional discounts for groups of 12 or larger are also available.

 

A View from the Bridge is recommended for audiences ages 13 and older.

 

The Weathervane Playhouse Box Office is open Mondays between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m., Tuesdays through Fridays between 10 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. and is also open beginning one hour before each performance. For tickets, visit or call the Weathervane Box Office at (330) 836-2626 during Box Office hours or connect online to www.weathervaneplayhouse.com.

 

* * *

 

Weathervane Playhouse and its dedicated volunteers offer vital performing arts resources for the people of Northeastern Ohio. We create exciting and thought-provoking shows with impressive production values. Through educational programs and volunteer opportunities for people of all ages and backgrounds, Weathervane serves the theater community, our patrons and our volunteers.

 

The Ohio Arts Council helped fund this program with state tax dollars to encourage economic growth, education excellence and cultural enrichment for all Ohioans.

 

Additional 2010-2011 season sponsors

89.7 WSKU-FM

The Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company

OMNOVA Solutions Foundation

Sisler McFawn Foundation

Akron Community Foundation

Kenneth L. Calhoun Charitable Trust

The Margaret Clark Morgan Foundation

Mary S. and David C. Corbin Foundation




Janis Harcar
Director of Advancement
Weathervane Playhouse
330-836-2323 X16
www.weathervaneplayhouse.com
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