Stage and screen actor Jonathan Slinger (Hamlet and Macbeth, Royal Shakespeare Company; Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, West End) will play the role of troubled head of the household Eddie Carbone in a new joint production of Arthur Miller's A View Form The Bridge at Bolton Octagon in September (8-30).
Said to be the drama's first outing in the UK for around a decade (Manchester's Royal Exchange was the previous highlight, in 2011), it's a joint production with Headlong, Chichester Festival Theatre and the Rose Theatre.
Slinger is joined by Nancy Crane (Inside Man, BBC; Suspicion, Apple TV; Summer & Smoke/Chimerica at the Almeida/West End), who will be the first woman to play the role of narrator Alfieri. The company is taking a radical new look at the psychology of the usually testosterone-charged play and its gender politics.
On the Brooklyn waterfront, where the fierce passions of ancestral Sicily linger, the orphaned Catherine falls for her handsome, newly-arrived cousin Rodolpho, an illegal migrant. Their romance is encouraged by her aunt Beatrice, but stirs complex feelings in her uncle, Eddie. As tensions rise, their story spins inexorably beyond control.
Headlong artistic director and the play's director, Holly Race Roughan, said: “I'm eager to explore the play's startlingly relevant themes with today’s audiences: the human price of a country’s immigration policies, ripping into the personal roar of suppressed feelings and the tenderness of romantic love.
“I am also excited by the play’s brutal and honest exploration of masculinity and how that sits with a modern audience. By casting Alfieri as a woman, I hope to illuminate further the presence of the emotional intelligence in the play, and its offer to help build a new kind of masculinity.
Nancy Crane said; "Holly’s production is going to offer a new perspective on one of Arthur Miller’s best-known plays. I’m excited to be the first woman to play Alfieri; I can’t wait to see what it does to the play’s themes of toxic masculinity. A modern-day Greek tragedy about love and identity and belonging and revenge, it seems to me incredibly relevant in 2023.”
More info and tickets here