Playwright: Arthur Miller. At: Teatro Vista at the Biograph, 2433 N. Lincoln Ave. Tickets: 773-871-3000; www.victorygardens.org; $25-$30. Runs through: May 18
Audiences secure in their own community status and ignorant of the social issues prevalent in Athens circa 400 B.C. tend to attribute classical tragedy's bloody reckonings solely to the aberrant personalities of its protagonists. Since premiering in 1959, Arthur Miller's 20th-century reimagining of the ancient themes is often analyzed exclusively along lines of domestic drama, but it should come as no surprise when a theater company with aesthetic sensibilities closely invested in the immigration experience views the events of New York's Red Hook district in a very different light.
The focus of our story is humble longshoreman Eddie Carbone, a devoted caretaker to his wife, Beatrice and his orphaned niece, Catherine. When a pair of distant Sicilian relatives propose to enter the United States illegallya not-uncommon occurrence in this Italian-American ghettohe generously offers them shelter in his home, little anticipating that an attraction will spring up between his ward and the handsome young Rodolfo, who arrives possessing a diversity of accomplishments to expedite his assimilation.
Is Eddie's opposition to his surrogate daughter's marrying an ambitious but penniless foreigner based in sublimated incest, in possible anti-gay unease at her prospective husband's gender-ambiguous mannerisms, or does it arise from his envy of the opportunities available to this usurper of his domain? Is his obsession that of every father-of-the-bride faced with relinquishing his child? Is it a man-to-man crisis of authority taken to fatal extremes? Is his despair at the collapse of his cultural identity what leads him to reject his family and friends' attempts at reconciliation, instead deliberately inviting his terrible fate?
Miller's complex scenario hints at all of these interpretations, but Teatro Vista director Ricardo Gutierrez chooses a straightforward approach, allowing us to judge our hero according to his deeds, rather than speculate on his motives. ( Rodolfo's tenor voice, for example, is not rendered as overtly fey, however amusing it may strike his fellow blue-collar dockworkers, and when the script requires Beatrice to accuse her husband of unnatural desires, his shocked revulsion is genuine. )
So where do you draw the line between outright bigotry and protecting your own? Playgoers accustomed to the Stanislavskian sweatiness of pop-Freudian peekaboo will not find it in this production, but are more likely to emerge with a fresh perspective on the consequences of living within a fluid society such as ours.