Chichester Festival Theatre: Review - why this view from the bridge has never been bleaker nor more beguiling

If you spent last night laid on the kitchen floor trying to raise aloft a dining chair from the base of one of its legs, the chances are you had just returned from Chichester Festival Theatre.

The incidental moment in one scene of just how difficult it is to lift a chair from that position brought momentary diversion from a play that showcases Miller’s ability to portray the lives of ordinary people without false hope.

Make no mistake, A View from the Bridge is a bleak assessment of an Italian-American neighbourhood near the Brooklyn Bridge in New York in the 1950s.

The story revolves around two Italian brothers Marco and Rodolpho who have arrived in New York as illegal immigrants and who seek refuge in Eddie’s (Jonathan Slinger) apartment.

It would be easy to assume that the growing resentment between Eddie and the brothers is driven by prejudice about their immigration status – but Miller’s tale is more Shakespearean in its tragic tensions, underpinned by the operatic tones that open and close the show.

Eddie lives with his wife Beatrice (Kirsty Bushell) and her orphaned teenage niece Catherine (Rachelle Diedericks) – who falls madly in love with one of the brothers, Rodolfo (Luke Newberry).

Their plan to marry throws Eddie into a spiral of despair and he makes every attempt to suggest the young man’s motives are merely to secure legal residence.

But, what first appears to be genuine concern for Catherine’s welfare is slowly revealed as Eddie’s much darker personal desires.

Like a chocolate gateau, this is a multi-layered treat – rich in complexity, bittersweet, brutal in its final conclusion.

A faultless delivery by an extraordinary cast shows the enduring power of Arthur Miller to challenge moral conventions; the current debate in Chichester about the use of an hotel as contingency accommodation for asylum seekers adds a topical dimension to it.

None of which makes it any easier to lift that wooden chair – no matter how simple such a venture might seem at first glance.