Of course Alex Esola had been familiar with “A View From the Bridge” long before he was cast in the role of Marco, an Italian immigrant who moves in with his cousin’s fracturing Brooklyn family in the 1950s. The Arthur Miller classic is a mainstay of the American stage.
“It was one of the most unbelievable and incredible things I’ve ever seen put on a stage in front of my eyes,” Esola says. “At the end I just kind of sat there in my seat for a little while and was just immobile, I was so amazed at what I had seen.”
After a run in Los Angeles with an entirely different cast that includes Esola as Marco, Van Hove’s Tony-winning production has arrived at the Kennedy Center for a limited engagement that begins Friday.
Breaking away from previous productions of the drama, this version has no set, save for a single large cube that rises at the beginning to reveal the actors. There are no costumes. The two actors playing immigrants do not use Italian accents, and the Brooklynites also speak accent-less English.
Van Hove “really took away all the excess, anything that you could possibly hide behind as an actor, or a production could mask itself with,” Esola says. “What’s left is Arthur Miller’s play and a group of people who are uninhibited by props or fancy costumes or a big, complicated set, and all they have is each other and Arthur Miller’s words to tell this story. As a result, it’s very effective, because it is just this very primitive version of storytelling.”
Because Esola had been so moved by the show when he saw it on Broadway, he felt a special kind of pressure after winning the role for the L.A. and D.C. runs.
“I was thinking about the feeling that I got as an audience member seeing it and just thinking, ‘Wait a second — it’s my job now to give other people that feeling. How am I going to do this?’” he says.
The minimalist nature of the show helped him overcome his anxiety. “It was a lesson I learned in trusting myself and trusting everybody else” in the cast, he says. “You just have to be there. Just breathe, and live out these lives for the two hours.”
Kennedy Center, 2700 F St. NW; through Dec. 3, $45-$149.
More things to do in D.C. this weekend:
