Interview: 'Breaking the Fourth Wall is the Best Thing Ever!': Actor Nancy Crane on Taking on Toxic Masculinity in A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE

Headlong Theatre's production of A View From The Bridge has just opened at Chichester Festival Theatre. Arthur Miller’s compelling drama follows the anti-hero Eddie Carbone as his world collapses through betrayal, jealousy, and desire.

This production marks the first time that the Miller estate has given permission for the role of lawyer Alfieri to be played by a woman, bringing a brand-new take to this classic play. 

BroadwayWorld spoke with actor Nancy Crane about taking on this iconic role, essential research into Alfieri's background and addressing toxic masculinity.

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You are first woman to play the role of lawyer Alfieri. What difference do you think that decision makes to the play?

It’s Alfieri who guides us through the story of Eddie Carbone, beginning and ending the play and, in between, dipping into scenes and commenting. She’s the chorus in this tragedy set in the docks of Red Hook. In this production she’s also onstage the whole time, watching the story unfold, so everything is being viewed through a female lens. I should also give a big shout-out to Kirsty Bushell’s wonderful Beatrice who is no submissive wife, but Eddie’s equal partner - that also alters the focus of the play. But with Alfieri, despite her self-doubt (a strangely feminine trait), as a lawyer her voice carries some authority – except she’s not always a reliable narrator. One story she tells at the beginning isn’t actually true, at another point she tells the audience she hardly remembers a particular conversation. But that’s also the nature of memory, sudden flashes of clarity amid the shifting fog. So the play is a memory play for Alfieri. But the gender swap also changes the nature of Alfieri’s interactions with Eddie. She becomes more emotionally involved than a male lawyer might.

The forensic psychotherapist Gwen Adshead, for many years a therapist at Broadmoor, spoke to us during rehearsals. She described herself as being passionate for justice while at the same time being compassionate for the tragedy. It’s something I’ve been thinking about. Gwen also talked about ambivalence, how people rarely have a single vision, a single idea – a fact also true of the human heart. Ambivalence can't be gendered, but I think there is something feminine in Alfieri’s refusal to see things in black and white. There’s also a certain ambivalence about her sexuality, which obviously isn’t in the play, but which we played with.

The character is split between their American life and their Italian heritage. How do you think that informs the character’s behaviour?

It’s a question I keep asking myself – and probably will be asking until the end of the run! The interesting thing about Alfieri is she only moved to New York when she was 25. You’d expect her to still have an Italian accent, but as our fabulous dialect coach Aundrea Fudge (herself a native New Yorker) pointed out, her idiom is pure New York. Trying to square that circle has been interesting.

Frank Peschier, the literary manager at Headlong, did some brilliant research about the handful of very privileged women who would have been Alfieri’s contemporaries who became lawyers in Italy. Based on this, the back story we came up with is that she was born in northern Italy, educated in Switzerland, went to university in Bologna, eventually qualified as a lawyer, and was about to start practicing in the brief period when women were able to in Italy, but as Mussolini rose to power he again banned women from the law, their role in the new fascist state being to bear children for the Fatherland. That’s when, at the age of 25, she came to New York.

The Swiss boarding school backstory helps because it’s possible to imagine her not only as a linguist, but as someone who became a good mimic at an early age.  And I’m watching a lot of Italian movies trying to find elements I can layer in. But you’re right about there being a character split. I moved from a small town in California to London to go to drama school when I was 18 and never left. So I identify with not feeling like one nationality or the other, of trying to fit in while never feeling like you belong. You end up being a very careful observer.

What do you think the character has to tell us about justice and the underdog in society?

I’ve recently done research for another project about women lawyers in the US in the 1940s and 1950s and how difficult it was for them to find jobs. Many of them, as their legs were ogled by the men conducting job interviews, were told their law degrees would make them great legal secretaries. So in one way it makes sense for Alfieri to be practicing law in Red Hook – she couldn’t get work anywhere else. But I think it’s far more interesting if Red Hook is her calling, that representing underdogs - in this case longshoremen (according to the US census of the period they were the lowest of the low) and that she feels a solidarity with them. Especially as someone who was clearly anti-fascist. I like to think that if some ritzy white-shoe law firm in Manhattan offered her a job she’d tell them to go to hell. It also honours the fact that it was a lawyer, Vincent Longhi, who was Arthur Miller’s guide though Red Hook and its labour politics and, later, his guide in Sicily (where they also had lunch with Lucky Luciano – but that’s another story…).

How has it been working with Jonathan Slinger (who plays Eddie), so closely?

It’s like taking a spin in a Rolls Royce! I love every minute of it! Jon is so present and makes himself so available every moment - is so IN the moment. He’s not only incredibly accomplished, but incredibly generous. You can look into his eyes and he’ll take you there. He’s a joy to work with. And that voice…

What is your favourite part of the play and why?

I love the opening speech to the audience - BUT I also love the scenes with Jon! Breaking the fourth wall and speaking to the audience is the best thing ever. Who knew? Except now I’m going want to start every play talking to the audience. It gets rid of any illusion of a scary audience somewhere out there in the dark. Also the writing is so wonderful in that first speech – witty, surprising, but like a rip tide pulling her towards Eddie. On the other hand, playing the scenes with Jon is such a pleasure. They too start one place and end up taking her somewhere she wasn’t expecting.

As the narrator of the story, Alfieri can portray Eddie’s internal struggles. Do you identify with the sympathy that is shown for Eddie?

I think she has immense compassion for Eddie’s pain but is horrified by his actions - and the terrible price everyone has to pay as a result. She urges him many times to change course. But, as she puts it, he has been given a destiny. The gods have seemingly willed his bloody path. I’m not sure how much she believes it, but perhaps it comforts her, lets her off the hook, for a moment. And Alfieri has her own internal struggles as she examines where her actions fell short and how she failed Eddie. 

How much do you think Alfieri feels torn between what is legal and what is just?

Coming from Mussolini’s Italy I think it must have been an immense relief to be in a country operating under the rule of law. Outside of the Jim Crow south, that is. One detail our associate director Emily Ling Williams pointed out is that in Alfieri’s riffs on law and nature she’s talking about the theory of natural law that Thomas Aquinas, among others, espoused.

The theory goes that natural law is innate in creation and always the same for all people in all places in all times. Its aim is the common good, so if a law does not serve the common good it can’t be a law. I also think Alfieri’s reverence for the rule of law is something everyone would have recognised coming out of a world war fought against fascism. And closer to home, the everyday violence meted out in Red Hook is not her idea of either law, or justice.

How relevant do you see the play today, particularly in terms of its portrayal of toxic masculinity?

Perhaps you’ve heard of #MeToo…? And Boris Johnson trying to prorogue Parliament in 2019 or Donald Trump trying to overturn the 2020 election? It’s the same toxic masculinity we see played out in Red Hook – basically guys with a beef because things aren’t going the way they want and would rather burn down the house than not get it. (And in a very Alfieri sidebar, it’s the courts, the law, that have saving us. For the time being, anyway…) But it’s also about what toxic masculinity does to men, how deformed they become within the narrow rules of behaviour in which they’re forced to live. What happens in the play isn’t good for women and most certainly isn’t good for men. The great feminist, ethicist and psychologist Carol Gilligan defines feminism as the freeing of democracy – for women AND men – from patriarchy. Alfieri would second that.

What has been the most challenging part of the play for you?

The last speech of the play, which isn’t very long, but after all the high drama she brings it back to herself. It’s been a challenge figure out how to pitch it. Another one I’m sure I’ll be working on until the last performance!

You have done a huge amount of UK theatre and were last on stage in UK In Yellowfin, back in 2021. What’s it like being back and touring here?

In my experience, theatre is where actors go to connect to good writing and audiences. Screen is where you go to make the money to fund it. Which is not to denigrate all screen acting or scripts! But there can be a sort of unadrenalised flatness,a loneliness to screen acting that comes from not being in dialogue with an audience. I also think of theatre as sacred, a kind of rite. With screen acting, well… the catering is nice! And Yellowfin was such a fabulous experience! Whatever theatre I did afterward was going to have to meet that very high bar – so thank God for Alfieri in A View From The Bridge! And can I also put in a plug for Octopolis, directed Ed Madden and written by Marek Horn (the Yellowfin team) which is just opening at Hampstead?

What are your plans after this tour?

I don’t have any work lined up yet, but after spending all this time watching Italian movies (and I’m even doing Italian Duolingo) I’m dying to go to Italy!

Read BroadwayWorld's review of the show at Chichester Festival Theatre here.

A View From The Bridge is at Chichester Festival Theatre until 28 October and at the Rose Theatre Kingston from 31 October to 11 November   

Production Photo Credits: The Other Richard

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