The beginnings in both productions show Eddie, as one of the lads, with mates, trying to show how Eddie is a regular working class guy who is liked amongst his community because you don’t see much of Eddie before Marco and Rodolpho come to stay and that’s when you believe he must start changing, once the visitors come.
A perfect example of how Eddie is displayed like a friendly man is in the first scene of the play in the Darlington Civic production because it shows that Eddie is a funny guy who can enjoy himself with his family, it’s the part where Eddie, B and Catherine are reminiscing of a time when Eddie brought coffee home from the piers with some big spiders stowing away in the boxes, in the Darlington Civic production Eddie laughs about it but in the BBC production Eddie shouts and doesn’t look at all friendly. The BBC production all the way through has Eddie shouting his lines more.
This play wouldn’t have had the same effect if the settings weren’t as they are because it has to be set in a working class place so the audience gets a feel of hardworking people who are bound together because they can only work on the piers and that if it was set in a wealthy place then there would be no illegal immigrants coming through as the rich people wouldn’t put up with it, so working class community works better as the people there sympathise and will take in illegal immigrants as their ancestors were almost probably immigrants too.
In the Darlington Civic Theatre production I feel Eddie was portrayed in a more sympathetic way than in the BBC production, I thought the actor was a more respectable man in the Darlington production compared to the actor in the BBC production who, whether on purpose or not, was constantly drooling and slobbering and was physically less attractive than the actor in the Darlington production. In both productions Eddie did make some kind gestures, he did take in his wife’s niece and he did invite his wife’s cousins to stay and did shelter them and provide their necessities. It cannot be argued Eddie wants the best for Catherine, because he wants her to stay on at school and make something of her life, the only argument that can be made is why he wants that, whether it be for her or for him. At one point in the play he even sticks up for Rodolpho, who he dislikes greatly, I believe he sticks up for him because it reflects on him in the end, but never the less he did stick up for him. He doesn’t like Rodolpho for one certain reason and that is because he believes he is using Catherine for a green card, so this is a reasonable part of Eddie as he’s only looking out for Catherine.
In the Darlington production another reason why Eddie is likened more is because Rodolpho comes across more camp making Eddie’s accusations seem less wild.
All of these nice things Eddie does don’t shine through too well in the BBC production, I think that whenever Eddie tries to be nice in this particular production the actor downplays them and his unattractiveness appears and he begins to drool and you feel his actions aren’t for real and he has alterative motives, for example when in the BBC production Eddie is sticking-up for Rodolpho to his own friends it appears he is more trying to say that there’s nothing weird about him that he’s just foreign but you can see the character starting to believe what his friends are joking about and from then on Eddie is intent on making everyone see Rodolpho ‘isn’t right’.
From the beginning of the play it is more or less obvious Eddie is doomed to die as Alfieri says so at the beginning/prologue and the BBC production almost makes you want Eddie to meet that particular fate because of how all the way through the play he had become increasingly unstable and starts to scare the audience of his next action, this is a good thing in a way because it makes the ending more believable than the one in the Darlington production as the Eddie in that isn’t portrayed as unhinged and makes you kind of dejected when he dies at the end. The BBC production I really believe portrayed Eddie too aggressively to give the character a chance to win the audiences vote of understanding so as soon as the audience caught a glimpse at Eddies bad side that’s the side they believed was the real him, so even when he says he doesn’t want Catherine to work because she’s not ready for the outside world the audience will think that he’s saying that for his own perverted self and wants her to stay home with him.
Though, in Eddie’s conviction a few things must be said, he does try and keep Catherine under his control and to a high extent has done that, she listens to him and gets upset when he doesn’t approve of her, in the first scene for example when Catherine tells Eddie about the job offer and he tells her to decline point blank and the stage directions specifically says - (almost in tears because he does not approve) a definite result of Eddie bringing her up. Eddie is a hypocrite, pure and simple, in the first scene in a matter minutes he contradicts himself telling Catherine how she is just a “baby” but then goes on to say she is growing up and is no longer a kid! The man can’t make up his mind, which is the first instance of his instability. Another example of Eddie’s hypocrisy is his changing morals on snitching on illegal immigrants; he goes on and on to Catherine how “you can quicker get back a million dollars that was stole than a word you gave away,” and how she shouldn’t say anything to anyone, “you – don’t – know – nothing.” Yet Eddie still gets so crazy towards the end he forgets his own words and does the worst possible thing a man in that community could do and goes to the immigration bureau.
In both productions there is almost stages of Eddie’s character becoming more and more unhinged and its shown through his visits to Alfieri’s office. Eddie manages to make three visits to Alfieri’s office before he loses it altogether and rings the immigration bureau from a phone box nearby. The first time Eddie goes to Alfieri he is his normal self with a hint of paranoia about Catherine and Rodolpho’s relationship, the Darlington production the first visit is played perfectly as Eddie comes across simply slightly worried about Catherine and maybe a little jealous over her new relationship but in the BBC production I feel Eddie is too troubled too early and so the stages aren’t as easy to spot, but they are there.
I feel the final visit is the most emotive and dramatic and both productions displayed it quite differently. To explain more easily I will go through the happenings of the play. Firstly the Darlington production has given you a sympathetic look towards Eddie Carbone, through out the attractive actor had more sensitive to the events without drooling or flying off the handle as much. It came as such an out of the blue shock when Eddie got so angry at finding Catherine and Rodolpho alone together and kissed them violently, each in turn, but in the BBC production you didn’t know what to expect from Eddie by this time, so the kissing scene was more believable and a lot more affecting because of ho Eddie was being portrayed.
In this ‘kissing’ scene the two productions gave me slightly different thoughts as to why Eddie did this. The Darlington production forced me to believe Eddie had a specific intention when he kissed them both. When he kissed Catherine I believed he did so because he was overcome with emotion at the thought of her growing up and leaving him, he just had to kiss her, to let her know how he feels and that he cares (I would like to point out, Catherine unlike Rodolpho, was not forced to kiss Eddie, there was no holding against will!) The kiss between him and Rodolpho I felt was for Eddie to prove to him and Catherine that Rodolpho really was ‘not right’, even though I came to conclusions over why he did kiss them both I still feel the Darlington didn’t prepare you for this terrible outburst of passion!
When watching the ‘kissing’ scene in the BBC production it was still a surprise but in a way I expected Eddie to do something wild but I felt more repulsed in this one not only through the homosexual kiss but also through the Catherine kiss because Eddie seemed almost feral, with his eyes wild and mouth all salivary it seemed the only reason he kissed them both was because he had lost it. This made the happenings after this scene more believable in this production where as in the Darlington production things seem a little far-fetched as people may think the ‘kissing’ scene was a one off and therefore no more unexpected things should happen, this is the biggest contrast between the two productions, the Eddie in the Darlington seems like a regular man who just simple gets in an upset frenzy and says uncalled for things, but the Eddie portrayed in the BBC production is a regular bloke who gets more and more obsessed with his wife’s niece which makes him act in a bizarre and unusual way.
So the ‘kissing’ scene really is comparative to the scene in which Eddies is in Alfieri’s office and storms out and rings the immigration bureau as they both show a side of Eddie, which is pretty much surprising.
The last visit was special in the BBC production because you could almost see the clogs turning in Eddie’s head, in this interpretation it was almost inevitable that Eddie was going to grass up the cousins. Alfieri was relentlessly telling him there was nothing the law could do to prevent Catherine and Rodolpho being together, nothing, except if the immigration bureau found out he was an illegal immigrant.
In the first two visits, also, Alfieri had told him there was nothing to do but call the bureau, but no one would do that, this was met first with a complete, “No, I couldn’t do that, what are you suggesting?!” Then when Alfieri suggested it a second time, Eddie was almost hesitant, but he did in the end reject the idea but sadly there was no rejecting the third time, Eddie thought about it for a couple of seconds, I really wonder what he thought of in that space of time, even though I imagine he was weighing the pros and cons of his actions.
There was a distinction between the two plays at the end, because when Eddie falters at the phone box in the BBC production he hesitates for a short while but you know, you simply know he is going to call but the Darlington production, you hope, you simply hope he wont, because there is still a slither of possibility he will forget about ringing and return home, which I think is a good thing in the play as it make the audience feel with the play.
If I was to produce this play I really think I would make it half way between these two productions for many plausible reasons. I think that the actor in the Darlington production is a better interpretation of the character Eddie Carbone as he more attractive but not too attractive, I like the idea that the audience likes Eddie so I would try and portray him to some extent sympathetically but I believe if he is portrayed too sympathetically the actions he does will seem silly. I would have him become progressively unhinged through his visits to Alfieri and that way his actions will fit how the audience are seeing him.
I can conclude that Eddie doesn’t realise his feelings for Catherine and if he does he doesn’t give in to them well enough, I imagine he sees what he wants to see no matter what and he takes out his pent up aggression for not being able to have Catherine out on the cousins, Marco and Rodolpho. I believe Arthur Miller purposely makes the character Eddie Carbone an ambiguous one as if to represent human nature and its murkiness and how difficult and indefinite it can be to interpret.
