Chicago Tribune - Highly Recommended
"...A play is rarely given a second chance," Arthur Miller once wrote. He who was right about so many perils of the human condition was wrong about that. To wit: Director Ivo van Hove's desperate, despairing, heart-pounding 2015 Broadway revival of "A View From the Bridge," now on a tour of major American cities and landed like a roaring child of Zeus at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago."
Chicago Sun Times - Highly Recommended
"...This is what Belgian director Ivo van Hove has done in his fascinating if sometimes frustrating production of Miller's 1955 play - a production whose London and Broadway runs garnered raves, and which is now receiving its Chicago debut, with a fine but different cast, at the Goodman Theatre. The result is something of a contemporary ballet - van Hove has masterfully "choreographed" every crucial interaction here - in which body language is of the essence. And as beautiful and powerful as it all is, it did leave me wondering whether those who have never seen more literal interpretations of the play are being denied some crucial context, and whether van Hove's work is best appreciated by those who can compare and contrast the two approaches."
Daily Herald - Highly Recommended
"...Van Hove's remarkable re-imagining of Arthur Miller's play -- remounted here as Goodman Theatre's season opener -- is about as pure an expression of Greek tragedy as you'll experience. If catharsis is what you seek, you will surely find it in van Hove's stripped-down, superbly acted production, which unfolds over two unrelenting, intermissionless hours within what appears to be a boxing ring."
Chicago Reader - Recommended
"...Bridge is one of Miller's great tragedies of the common man-like Death of a Salesman, only more so. It tells the tale of Eddie Carbone, a longshoreman who shares an apartment in Red Hook, Brooklyn ("the gullet of New York swallowing the tonnage of the world," we're told), with his wife, Beatrice, and their 17-year-old niece, Catherine, a member of the household since childhood. Eddie's the epitome of the hard-working family man."
Windy City Times - Recommended
"...Even those familiar with a script now constituting standard classroom curriculum may find themselves joining in the visceral response. The custom in our own country is to hint at Miller's Freudian subtext from the start, but Hove initially keeps his company's emotional level at low ebb, the better to build the intensity gradually over an intermissionless 110 minutes, ensuring a full-blown Aristotelian catharsis for first viewers and seasoned theatergoers alike."
Time Out Chicago - Highly Recommended
"...With a strong cast freed from naturalistic trappings to home in on Miller’s language and intentions—with the set and lighting designer Jan Versweyweld and sound designer Tom Gibbons helping to increase the sense of abnormal, inevitable dread—don’t be surprised when you come away with a breathtakingly new and modern view of a play from generations past."
Chicago On the Aisle - Highly Recommended
"...In this stark take on the play, directed by Ivo Van Hove, events unfold within a minimal set (Jan Versweyveld) bordered by a wall at the rear and a continuous three-sided bench, effectively a boundary that hems in all the characters: a cage, from which no one can fly."
Stage and Cinema - Highly Recommended
"...In this Young Vic production (which has played Broadway, L.A., and D.C.), the on-stage eavesdroppers must stand-or sit-in for the unseen community, a not altogether convincing substitution. But, no question, a suddenly small mainstage fills to bursting with a plot where every achingly unavoidable twist seems foretold."
Around The Town Chicago - Recommended
"... The Goodman Theatre pulled off something of a theatrical coup when they snagged the rights to Ivo van Hove’s stripped-down production of “A View from the Bridge”. Without the burden of scenery, the viewer can concentrate on powerful performances by Ian Bedford and the rest of the cast. Powerful performance aside, Eddie is still just a thug seething with jealousy and rage. I respect the work, but I don’t like the play."
Chicagoland Theater Reviews - Highly Recommended
"...The production obviously requires a commanding and credible Eddie Carbone to make van Hove's vision come alive, and Goodman has him in Ian Barford, who plays an intimidating primal man who towers over the other main characters in size and in fierce emotion. Barford convinces the viewers that he can harbor incestuous feelings for his niece (and maybe even homosexual feelings for Rodolpho) that he cannot comprehend. It's a performance outwardly dominated by the character's raw physical personality, but inside he's a confused and frustrated man caught up in forces beyond his recognition, much less his control, and for that weakness he does earn some sympathy. As a complex, commanding piece of acting, we won't see any better this season, or maybe beyond."
The Fourth Walsh - Recommended
"...THE VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE is a thought-provoking examination of man driven to the edge by his own obsession."
Third Coast Review - Highly Recommended
"...Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge is performed on the most minimal of stages with few costume changes (and no shoes), thus proving that it's really the script and the acting that are the key elements in successful theater. Miller's powerful story and visceral language make the Goodman Theatre's production both an emotional family story and a contemporary immigration lesson."
Chicago On Stage - Highly Recommended
"...Ivo van Hove's brilliant staging of this dark psychological tragedy sizzles on the Goodman stage. Bedford's performance is never a jot less than powerful and disturbing, and he is equaled by everyone else on stage. Combs is a revelation as the teenage niece unknowingly caught in an illicit love triangle, and Nichols provides needed sanity as her mother, trying to save her husband's soul and their marriage by talking sense to her daughter. Abeles make a great Romeo figure, and Espinoza the intense Tybalt-like character, this time on Romeo's side, who has never seen a fight he didn't like. But the most complex performance by far is that of Knight, whose narrator/lawyer finds more emotional levels than all of the rest combined by knowing each one of them and detesting it all. Knight is brilliant in portraying the emptiness and waste he is witnessing and what it does to his character, who loses his own soul as well while trying to do the impossible: save an already lost man."
Picture This Post - Highly Recommended
"...Thrilling and aesthetically striking, Ivo van Hove’s production of View from the Bridge is a must-see event."
Splash Magazine - Highly Recommended
"...The disaster has been laid open before us on a spare squared-off set like a boxing ring. In the opening, Alfieri, himself an Italian born immigrant, narrates the story of Eddie Carbone and his family and relates as well the background of the Brooklyn neighborhood in which the action takes place. Red Hook is the home of second-generation Sicilians who allow their disputes to be handled legally, but Eddie Carbone cannot accept the strictures of society."
