Catherine, the niece, falls in love with the younger Italian brotherĮddie does not understand why he opposes the marriage so violently, nor do any of the other people who are involved. Early in the play two of his wife's Italian relatives are smuggled in and start to live furtively in Eddie's apartment. Eddie, an ordinary longshoreman, in unconsciously in love with his niece-theĭaughter of his wife's dead sister. Miller once heard in the Brooklyn neighborhood where he lives. Miller had not reduced his material to the size of a one-act play.īut in the second play, 'A View From the Bridge,' has power and substance. Although it is under-written it gives the paradoxical impression of being overwritten, as though Mr. Of meaning, the play is swamped in its own flood of detail. Instead of evoking a poetic mood or setting up overtones Both the acting and the script are distractingly busy. Miller's exercise in theatrical photography is flat and diffuse. Except for a few words of comment by two young men who have dreams of a better future, the drama is factual,Ĭomposed of humdrum details. 'A Memory of Two Mondays' chronicles the daily life of the men and women who work in the shipping room of a dingy barren warehouse. They sketch the lives of undistinguished, unheroic city workers, and both make a point of Mr. But the plays are related in style and point of view.

Although with some exceptions the same actors appear in both plays, the storiesĪnd the characters are not the same. The plays are 'A Memory of Two Mondays' and 'A View From the Bridge.' The first takes place on the Manhattan side of the East River the second, in Brooklyn. He has tried to let the plays tell their own stories. Believing in the dramatic values of the material, 'A View From the Bridge' By BROOKS ATKINSON or credible reasons Arthur Miller has deliberately under-written the two one-act plays that are now on stage at the Coronet.

A View from the Bridge by Arthur Miller