Written by Arthur Miller

Directed by Jemima Levick

Review by Dominic Corr

Tickets from £18.50

When a text’s relevance continues to pierce through to the contemporary world, the necessity to ‘update’ or bring the piece’s setting to the modern day can often feel hollow or listless. For Jemima Levick’s superb opening production for The Tron Theatre’s 2025 season, Arthur Miller’s tale of immigration, displacement, obsession, and family brings the audience firmly into the Brooklyn docks of the now rather than the fifties.

As so often expected, the American Dream is not far behind in the story’s make-up, with longshoreman Eddie opening their home to his wife Beatrice’s Sicilian immigrant cousins, Rodolpho and Marco. With niece Catherine in toe, the sparks of young romance ignite a more sinister obsession within Eddie’s repressed desires for his niece, the ominous winds of A View from the Bridge whistling through down the spines of the audience early – MarkHolgate’s presence makes the audience question the safety of Catherine being left alone with her Uncle, and the precise nature of Beatrice’s understanding, but inability to cut through to her husband, all resonate deeply with a misplace, obsessive form of contaminated love.

Newcomer Holly Howden Gilchrist makes the impression fast, a tangled weave of vulnerabilities at the precipice of adulthood – torn between the naivety and energy of youth and the ambition and complexities of becoming a woman. It’s a complicated, distorted reflection of sorts, of differing paths and the harshness of the truth for Nicole Cooper’s Catherine – a woman holding their tongue, seven steps ahead where able, but always falling into the same pitfalls concerning her husband. The micro-aggressions and demonstrations of emotion, daggers and glances which could cut all, solidify this as a ‘real’ family dynamic, catapulting between adoration to scolding under Levick’s methodical and reserved direction, which builds the sensitivities into genuine anguish in conversations between Cooper and Howden Gilchrist.

As family dynamics always cross the barriers of time, Alex Lowbde’s tiered set design certainly speaks with a similar voice, neutral in its design to neither connect to the past nor the present and while a touch lost in the Tron space, works to confine the emotions to a combustive, choking intention.

Where Levick’s understanding of the text is at its best is not where the initial thoughts may have led – the elements and knowledge of Miller’s language and writing on immigration and displacement are clear, ReubenJoseph’s Marco and Michael Guest’s Rodolpho determination for a better future a central part of the production. But the most influential and powerful impact is caused by Eddie’s action; a man’s choices drive this contemporary and resonating production forward – heralding a taste of Levick’s stylistic choices – a welcome addition to a rejuvenated Tron.

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