THE ROGUE PRESENTS "A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE" WITH COVID CONSTRAINTS

By Chuck Graham, TucsonStage.com

From left, a disagreement among Catherine (Bryn Booth), Rodolpho (Hunter Hnat) and Eddie (Aaron Shand).

COVID or no COVID, the real tragedy would be to miss The Rogue Theatre's heart-wrenching production of Arthur Miller's "A View from the Bridge." 

That's the Brooklyn Bridge and at its foot the squalid neighborhood of Red Hook, where getting justice is more important than following the law.

As for skirting COVID-19, all of Tucson's performing arts groups are trying different ways to keep their audiences safe, while also creating a rewarding experience by the performers.

At the Rogue, only 25 percent of the theater's available seating is used. Alternate rows of seats are kept completely empty. Patrons in pairs are scattered widely among the remaining spaces, always wearing masks.

Some 15 minutes before each performance, ticket holders are seated individually, where their theater programs are waiting in place.

You can go to the theater, enter the theater, watch the show and leave the theater without ever touching anything but your own seat and program. You aren't even given a ticket. Everyone also gets their temperatures taken with one of those forehead thermometers.

From an artistic standpoint, this company has also chosen the most complicated path and, it must be said, the most satisfying one. Christopher Johnson is this production's director. He begins on a dramatic stage set that has the bridge looming, ever present, in the background.

Then all the actors, fully costumed, wear COVID masks covering their noses and mouths. The masks are made from a sheer material that reveals some facial features underneath.

Then comes the magic.

All the dialogue, all the pauses and empty spaces where actors are moving instead of talking, are recorded to be played back through the theater's sound system. Then the actors perform the physical part of their roles, following along with the recording – basically, pantomiming to their own soundtrack.

Johnson makes this work beautifully. The full production flows with the natural rhythm of a kitchen sink drama that quickly pulls you into Miller's biting dialogue as Eddie Carbone (Aaron Shand), the law-and-order longshoreman, tries to run his little family the way he always has in the brutal years leading up to World War II.

Eddie takes pride in working hard, and keeping the bills paid. He also runs the lives of wife Beatrice (Carley Elizabeth Preston) and her 17-year-old niece Catherine (Bryn Booth) that the two have raised since childhood. Now Catherine has blossomed into full womanly flower and Eddie is completely fascinated. Beatrice is wary.

This delicate balancing act gets completely disrupted when two of Beatrice's cousins from Italy, disguised as sailors, manage to sneak into the United States and get past New York's immigration authorities. The cousins are Rodolpho (Hunter Hnat) and Marco (Jeffrey Baden). In Eddie's own Italian-American world, harboring these illegal immigrants is the honorable thing to do.

But then Rudolpho, a charismatic lad, and sweet Christine take a liking to each other. Eddie has no toleration for this competition. Now it's personal.

Miller expands his classic play by adding the observations of a neighborhood lawyer, Alfieri (Joseph McGrath), as a kind of narrator and ring master. Eddie just can't believe this new nation doesn't have a law that gives him the right to control Catherine's life. Alfieri tells Eddie to “let her go.”

All the performances are remarkably even, each cast member carrying a share of the load. While the play can seem built on one argument after another, Johnson tempers each confrontation differently, so they become 50 shades of anger...always finding the fear or frustration beneath that is responsible for the outburst, not blaming but explaining why an objection is necessary.

Miller's insistence on believing in the ethical values of mundane behavior lends meaning to the bitterness we feel in today's conflicts of polarizing differences. By the end, even Eddie has become a sympathetic figure...to some degree.

"A View from the Bridge” runs through Sept. 27 with performances at 7:30 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, also at 2 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays, in The Rogue Theatre, 300 E. University Blvd.

The theater is cleaned by professionals after each show. All tickets are $42.

For details and reservations, 551-2053, or visit theroguetheater.org