Culture | Theatre The Evening Standard's journalism is supported by our readers. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Dominic West settles comfortably into the role of the rumpled, fatally flawed longshoreman Eddie Carbone in Arthur Miller ’s 1956 drama, a tale of Italian-Americans heavily indebted to Greek tragedy.
The part of Eddie, whose suppressed, illicit passion for his niece presages his downfall, requires rough charm, burly physicality and – in the histrionic final scenes – a capacity for anguished roaring. In his first stage role in nine years, the star of The Wire and The Crown absolutely delivers all of the above. He has fine support from Kate Fleetwood as Eddie’s pinched wife Beatrice, Nia Towle as the disconcerted object of his affection, and It’s a Sin’s Callum Scott Howells as the young Sicilian who steals her away.
Though the theme of immigration makes the story feel newly contemporary, Lindsay Posner’s production, which originated at Bath’s Ustinov Studio, feels staid and old-fashioned. It sometimes inspires titters when it should provoke shock and awe. Peter McKintosh’s set of towering, grimy clapboard walls and fire escapes evokes the oppressive, impoverished proximity in which the working-class Italian community live in Red Hook, Brooklyn.
Eddie, Beatrice and Catherine are squeezed into a tiny living room with no rug and no tablecloth. Yet their house is a castle, and their status as American c.
