Miller's View From the Bridge, Coward's Present Laughter, and Foote's Orphans' Home Cycle Part 3

Joan Marcus

Red Hook gets tragic: Scarlett Johansson and Liev Schreiber in A View From the Bridge

Details

A View From the Bridge
By Arthur Miller
Cort Theatre
138 West 48th Street, 212-239-6200

Present Laughter
By Noël Coward
Roundabout/American Airlines Theatre
227 West 42nd Street, 212-719-1300

The Orphans' Home Cycle, Part 3
By Horton Foote
Signature Theatre
555 West 42nd Street, 212-244-7529

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More About

• Arthur Miller
• Liev Schreiber
• Eddie Carbone
• Theatrical Plays
• Theater

What significance Foote means us to draw from Horace's story isn't always clear. Taken as a whole, the trilogy shows a steady slippage of focus. Full of group comings and goings that, in Michael Wilson's production, often look mechanical, Part 3 seems awash in the reiterated family data and town gossip that, in earlier segments, function as a dramatic contrast to Horace's embittered silence. Even the climax, in which he finally explodes at his insufficiently caring mother, is overshadowed by a secondary character's having a similar but showier explosion. Still, the work has enough substance to support its three-evening length, especially with performers like Pat Bowie, Annalee Jefferies, Maggie Lacey, and Pamela Payton-Wright to articulate it.

mfeingold@villagevoice.com