Those weary throngs looked for family members to house them until money jangled in their shredded pockets. It’s these hard-working, nameless people cloaked in humbleness and a code of honor who surface in Arthur Miller’s “A View From the Bridge” now playing at the Cort Theatre.

In one of the decade’s most resonant productions of “A View From The Bridge,” director Gregory Mosher fully integrates the lawyer/Greek chorus Alfieri (Michael Cristofer) into the plot’s dramatic fabric. Lamenting the impending tragedy, Afieri embraces and abhors the inability to change the circumstances of the human catastrophe.

Two cousins arrive from Sicily at the invitation of Eddie (Live Schreiber) a Brooklyn Longshoreman of very modest means. Eddie believes it’s his duty to assist the starving relatives. The bear-like Marco (Corey Stoll) can’t wait to send money home for medication to save the life of his 6 year old suffering from pneumonia. The younger, artistic Rodolpho (Morgan Spector)--making his knock out Broadway debut--seeks a new life in America.

That’s all well and good, but hard-working Eddie lives with his wife Beatrice (Jessica Hecht) and her sister’s daughter Catherine (Scarlett Johansson). Raised like their own, an indelible bond exists between the lovely Catherine and Eddie. Coming into her 18th birthday, she poses a problem for Eddie and Rodolpho.

When we first meet the family, the audience does not even register Johansson’s entrance due to her complete disappearance into the character. Always busying herself with housework and day-to-day worries, Beatrice knows her husband’s emotional grip on Catherine is dodgy, and tries to prepare him for the inevitable separation. For her part, Catherine reacts to Eddie’s every nuance--anticipating his every desire. The only desire she fails to fully register is his buried lust for her.

An actor who swings with ease between Shakespeare and horror films, Liev starts just below the boiling point and builds with masterly precision to a full-blown explosion. However, his character never resorts to shrill yells, or bruiser tactics, instead he shimmies over an emotional high wire caked with years of frustration and fantasy. He exudes the animal magnetism and danger of a Marlon Brando as Stanley, only difference--Eddie slips.

With Alfieri as Eddie’s confessor, the sequence of events fall like tear drops on the sweat soaked cement. The audience registers the tightening noose of the end--good intentions undone by unmanageable feelings.

The whole cast functions like a single unit, with Liev producing a startling performance at the center of it all. Johansson plays a pitch perfect young woman of 18, excited, and eager to live but unequipped to manage a full grown man’s unchecked attachment. In contrast to Eddie, Rodolpho rocks as an entertaining man capable of singing, dancing, making dresses and making people laugh. As the solid brother, Marco brings pathos and the honor-bound ways of old Sicily to the fore, while the clear-eyed Beatrice recognizes she is no match for the final calamity.

Nothing drab about this production, just a wonderfully solid view of America’s shifts.
C.Ipiotis