If you were directing A View from the Bridge, how would you hope your audience would react to the relationship between Catherine and Eddie?

As a director of A View from the Bridge, I would want the audience to feel that there is a mixed relationship portrayed between Eddie and Catherine. This relationship varies throughout the play and in the end it completely disintegrates. Also I would need to emphasize the turning points so the audience would change their views at these points, which is what a director would want. As the play develops, certain pivotal scenes change the view of their relationship. Eddie should act as a father figure and be overprotective of her, as he just wants the best for her. I would want the audience to keep this in mind and subsequently adjust their views accordingly.

The opening scene is one of the most crucial scenes because it introduces the characters of Eddie and Catherine. It is set in the home, which shows the close family relationship. Eddie is portrayed as an ordinary average guy who is a longshoreman and who works on the docks. We know that both Catherine and Eddie live together but we are unsure about their relationship. They are both friendly towards each other which may perhaps just be a normal friendship or they could be flirting. During this scene, it is shown by Catherine that she wants Eddie’s approval of what she is wearing, “You like it? I fixed it differently”. She uses flirtatious actions to gain this, “Running her hands over her skirt”. At this time, I would want the audience to re-evaluate their view on their relationship. As soon as Eddie comes home he sees Catherine and comments on her dress, “nice”. He remarks on how short it is which is a typical uncle and niece relationship, where an uncle is concerned about his niece.

Catherine is really eager to please Eddie as she runs around for him making sure he is happy, “I’ll get you a beer all right”. This conveys that their relationship is relatively strong. At some point in this scene Catherine tries to make her self look sexy. However Eddie does not like this, “I think its too short isn’t it,” as he does not like her to grow up and that he wants her to remain as a child. At this instant, I would like the audience to realize that Eddie is being a father figure to Catherine and too overprotective. Furthermore Eddie calls Catherine a “baby” which is caused by Eddie’s disapproval. He says this as he sees Catherine as someone who is young and he does not want her to grow up. This ends up with Catherine getting upset and ending up with tears. At this moment I would want the audience to distinguish an uncle niece relationship evolving.

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One of the turning points in this play is of Catherine getting a job in a hazardous suburb. She tells Eddie of this opportunity; however seeing that Eddie is overprotective you can predict that he is not going to be happy about this. One of the reasons for this is that he knows that she is going to be surrounded by boys and that they are going to take advantage of her. I would want the audience to realize that Eddie does care for her but he is slightly overprotective. Catherine is trying to get rid of this grip and run her own life. After decisions made, Eddie gives in and makes Catherine happy. She “then rushes and hugs him”. At this junction, the audience should see the grip of Eddie over Catherine is clear as Catherine is constantly dependant on Eddie’s decisions.

The next crucial scene is when Beatrice’s cousins, Marco and Rodolfo arrive from Italy as illegal Italian immigrants. They have come over to America to earn some extra cash. Marco is married and has got two children whilst Rodolfo is still single. When, both Catherine and Rodolfo see each other, it is almost like love at first site. Catherine uses flirtatious procedures to convey to the audience that she feels somewhat of him. When she starts using these actions, “High heels” Eddie does not like this and so sends her back to the room to get changed, “Do me a favour, will you? Go ahead.” This makes Catherine undergo embarrassment as Rodolfo was at the scene. I would want the audience to observe that both Catherine and Rodolfo have got feelings for each other and that Eddie is in the surroundings being jealous. Due to the relationship between Eddie and Catherine, Beatrice’s relationship is suffering as he is paying attention more towards Catherine then Beatrice.

Another crucial scene/turning point in this play is when both, Rodolfo and Catherine are left unaccompanied in the apartment. Whilst in the room, Catherine questions Rodolfo about his motives, in which he is traumatized and was wondering if Eddie thought that too. This is because Eddie warns Catherine that he is after an American citizenship. She asks him, “Would you still want to do it if it turned out we had to go live in Italy” His reaction was, “No; I will not marry you in Italy. I want to be a citizen”. At this instant I would want the audience to become conscious that Rodolfo wants to marry Catherine just to be an American Citizen and that they could change their minds later on. Catherine replies to this and says that she does not want to leave Eddie after what he has done for her (Eddie has treated her as a daughter and paid for her to go to extra classes of her interest after leaving high school.)

She makes it sound that Eddie was an ex-lover or ex-husband of her, “You thinks it’s so easy to turn around and say to a man he’s noting’ to you no more?” As a director I would want the audience to realize that Catherine is aware that she needs to grow up as she gets advice from Beatrice saying, “Beatrice says to be a woman”. At this point Catherine gets aggravated as she makes it sound as if she has to choose between Rodolfo and Eddie, “I know him and now I’m supposed to turn around and make a stranger out of him.” She takes in mind what Beatrice suggested to her about being a woman which leads to her having sex with Rodolfo. This is a turning point to the audience and to Catherine. At this turning point I would want the audience to reconsider their views on Rodolfo about wanting to be an American citizen. No one would sleep with a woman and not have feelings for her.

The light rises on Eddie. He enters the flat drunk and see’s a glimpse of Catherine adjusting her dress and coming from the bedroom. At this particular moment, Eddie senses what the two have been up to. “Rodolfo appears in the bedroom doorway. Eddie see’s him and his arm jerks slightly in shock.” He does this action as he wants to hit Rodolfo as he knows what they have been up to and that he is jealous and cannot bear it. He can not handle that Catherine is taking responsible of her own life. When a pause appears, as a director I would want to create tension in the audience as the characters are all hiked up.

Shortly after the build up of tension, Eddie switches his actions and tells Rodolfo to “Pack it up” and “Get out of here”. Eddie gets dominant over Catherine by grabbing her and stopping her from following Rodolfo to her bedroom. “She frees her arm,” which indicates her rebelling against him and her wanting his approval. Eddie, at his point is jealous following what Rodolfo and Catherine have been up to and knows that he cannot have her. Soon after there is a sudden breakthrough of Eddies feelings as he, “reaches out suddenly, draws her to him and as she strives to free himself he kisses her on the mouth.” He kisses her to provoke Rodolfo and to see how she and he react. This all leads to violence in which, “Rodolfo flies at him in attack”. At this point Eddie kisses Rodolfo to show Catherine he is gay and to show her that Rodolfo did not prevent this from happening.

The last crucial scene in this play is the last scene where Eddie gets killed. This consequence was created when Eddie did a very unintelligent thing of phoning the immigration bureau to report the two illegal immigrants, Rodolfo and Marco. He then regrets phoning the bureau up and tells them to move as they moved with more illegal immigrants which had a very violent family. This way Rodolfo and Marco would not get caught and would remain safe whereas the other illegal immigrants wouldn’t. Soon after they decided, they did not have enough time to move, as the officers came to pick Rodolfo and Marco up. Eddie had begged Beatrice to tell them to move and soon after, she had realized what Eddie had done. She turned against Eddie and used harsh language against him, “He’s a rat.” At this time I would want my audience to turn against Eddie. This then lead to more violence of Eddie getting killed by Marco as he has suffered from his family being without food and money. I would want my audience to feel more sympathy for Marco rather than Rodolfo.

The culture of this play is all in relation to a child who grassed his uncle to the immigration bureau seeing that he was an illegal immigrant. The kid was completely beaten up by his family and no-one wanted to know him after what he did. In an Italian family, the families need to be loyal to each other and if something goes wrong outside the family, the Sicilian community requires the law to be taken in hand and that justice should be done. I would want the audience to relate back to this during the last scene and keep this in mind as this is a sort of thing that Eddie had done but the consequences were much worse.

If I was directing A View from the Bridge I would want my audience to see that there is a mixed relationship portrayed in this play. This is because of the actions, dialogue and motives used between the two characters. Throughout the play, I would want the audience to change their views on what they thought of the character of Eddie as he did some good quality things however he also did horrific things. The relationship between Eddie and Catherine would have never been further than an uncle and niece. Two relationships between, Eddie and Beatrice and Catherine and Rodolfo both got disturbed due to the actions undertaken by Eddie which affected the characters. I would want my audience to keep on re-evaluating their views on the relationship between Eddie and Catherine as this would make the play more interesting. Coming to the end of the play, the audience would have found out that Eddie did have feelings for Beatrice as his last words were ‘My lovely B’.

BY JULAN SHAH