Zoe Terakes, Damian Walshe-Howling, Steve Bastoni, Daniela Farinacci, and Andrew Coshan in A View From the Bridge (photograph by Pia Johnson)

It is the mid-1950s: in the immigrant communities of New York’s Red Hook, where the dock-working longshoremen labour under the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge, we meet Eddie Carbone (Steve Bastoni), a no-nonsense, proudly blue-collar man for whom loyalty, respect, and family are sacrosanct. Alongside his wife, Beatrice (Daniela Farinacci), he has raised his orphaned, eighteen-year-old niece Catherine (Zoe Terakes). Now he is about to welcome two more relatives under his roof: Beatrice’s cousins Marco (Damian Walshe-Howling) and Rodolpho (Andrew Coshan). These are no ordinary houseguests. Smuggled in via the docks, the two men are illegal immigrants fleeing the economic turmoil of postwar Italy. Their arrival will light an unstoppable fuse that burns inexorably towards a cataclysm that is plain to see and yet impossible to avert.

Miller’s taut, high-stakes narrative exists in a kind of liminal flux, at once inflexibly specific, exploring a story of exacting culture, time, and place, and yet laced with themes that are timeless and universal. A director could be drawn to one end of this polarity or the other, rooting a production in historical naturalism or in a more experimental vernacular. Sinclair achieves something far rarer: a setting that simultaneously channels both the naturalistic and experimental in equal measure. The result is extraordinarily powerful.

Steve Bastoni and Andrew Coshan in A View from the Bridge (photograph by Pia Johnson)

Sinclair possesses an implicit understanding of Miller’s intent, and this profound awareness reveals another duality: an account that honours the essence of its source while being unexpectedly bold in its execution. The stage is more an abyssal plain than a theatrical construct, adorned by a single prop: a simple wooden chair. It’s a refreshing change of pace from the stock-standard MTC affair, which more often than not opts for extravagantly realised and over-engineered sets.

The rest of the stage is a seamless black box, the actors emerging then retreating into infinite shadow. Just a handful of subtle yet highly effective lighting and sound cues marshal the passage of time and recollection. Such a bare setting, stripped of the usual theatrical trappings that might distract an audience from less-than-perfect performances, offers nowhere for the actors to hide. It also creates a wonderfully uncluttered space for a director to unleash the full range of his cast’s talents while investigating the most complex undercurrents of the text. Sinclair does both with disciplined restraint and great sophistication, making nods to certain contemporary resonances without slathering on unnecessary social or political commentary.

At the centre of it all, Bastoni’s Eddie manages to find the perfect balance between the archetypal man’s man – a paragon of toxic masculinity – and a more subtle, individual rendering that increasingly seethes with internal conflict. His mealy-mouthed chicanery, as he desperately tries to evade his unspeakable desires, both incestuous and homosexual, could easily become hokey and caricaturish. Bastoni navigates these potential pitfalls masterfully in one of the most assured turns I’ve seen in any recent MTC production.

Zoe Terakes in A View from the Bridge (photograph by Pia Johnson)

The entire cast is superb; the actors submit to the intense emotional demands of this play with near-masochistic commitment. In this high-calibre ensemble, Zoe Terakes stands out. Terakes was impressive in last year’s production of A Doll’s House, Part 2. Here, with a far richer role to tackle, she showcases abilities that hold the promise of a very bright career in the future.

If there is a shortcoming in this production, it is that, at times, Sinclair exalts Miller’s Classical fascination to the exclusion of more direct storytelling. In the Greek tradition, the audience is shielded from the story’s fatal climax, save for a jumble of anguished voices. This may well be Classically authentic, but in a play so weighed down by tragedy, a moment of simple pathos, sentimental as it may be, might well have summoned a glimpse of the catharsis that Eddie so desperately craves.

A View from the Bridge is being performed by Melbourne Theatre Company at the Southbank Theatre, The Sumner, from 9 March to 18 April 2019. Performance attended: 14 March.