Almost Nothing to Lean on but Onstage Chemistry

New York Times. January 18, 1998. By Sylviane Gold.

RECOUNTING THE PRODUCTION history of his play ''A View From the Bridge,'' Arthur Miller described the challenge facing the company that first brought it to the stage in 1955. ''We were all aware that a strange style was called for,'' he wrote in the introduction to the text, ''which we were unsure how to provide.''

Judging from the recent critical huzzahs, the actors and director of the Roundabout Theater Company production have found that ''strange style'': a high-voltage combination of realistic acting with a sketched-in amphitheater of a set and heightened lighting and sound effects that give this tale of a Brooklyn longshoreman's fall the tragic dimension Mr. Miller envisioned.

Even critics who dislike the play, or took issue with this production's conception, have reached for superlatives to praise the acting. Anthony LaPaglia plays Eddie Carbone, the dockworker simmering with passion for the teen-age niece he and his wife have brought up. The actor, whose highly praised performance as another earthy Italian -- Mangiacavallo in the 1995 revival of ''The Rose Tattoo'' -- fell short of a Tony nomination, is not likely to be overlooked again. Allison Janney, who last season won acclaim as Frank Langella's cosmopolitan wife in ''Present Laughter'' on Broadway, gives her hard-bitten Beatrice, Eddie's wife, a tender core. Brittany Murphy, best known for her supporting role in the movie ''Clueless,'' is making her stage debut as a bubbly, vulnerable Katie, Eddie's niece.

Gathering recently in a lounge at the Roundabout's Criterion Center on Broadway, where ''A View From the Bridge'' runs through Feb. 22, Mr. LaPaglia, Ms. Janney and their director, Michael Mayer, talked about how they worked to find the acting style that would best serve the spare production. The discussion illuminated some of the mysterious process that transforms words on paper into theater.

Mr. Miller's tale of passion and betrayal on the Brooklyn docks, Mr. Mayer said, ''is almost an expressionistic play, but it's made up of naturalistic scenes.'' The problem for the actors was to create that naturalism without any help from the physical setting.

''I remember seeing the set for the first time and being terrified that I wasn't going to have a kitchen sink,'' Ms. Janney said. ''It was going to be all about the acting. But once you're doing it, you realize it frees you up. It's just me and Eddie up there. The simplicity makes it more powerful.''

Mr. LaPaglia concurred. ''Props sometimes let you hide,'' he said, as he demonstrated by striking a debonair pose beside a nonexistent fireplace.

Around the third week of rehearsals, Mr. Mayer recalled, he had an attack of nerves. ''What if the play doesn't support this very bold stylistic choice?'' he wondered. In a panic, he called the design team. ''We can build walls,'' they assured him.

The walls were unnecessary. ''When you have words like that,'' Mr. LaPaglia said, ''you don't need anything else to hang onto. The reason we can do it naturally is that this dialogue requires that it be natural.''

''When I read this play,'' he continued, ''I emotionally understood the material. I understood that guy. I've known that guy. I've known that girl. I've known that woman. I've known them all, and I've heard that dialogue. I guarantee, if you go to a Mediterranean ethnic community, which is what I come from, fathers still have those conversations with their daughters. To this day they have them.''

Ms. Janney's road to Beatrice was not as direct. ''I understood her in my mind,'' she said, ''but emotionally I didn't connect with her right away. I go through a whole thing I can't explain -- a whole other world is going on in my mind that helps me ride this play.''

Mr. Mayer, whose other Broadway show, ''The Triumph of Love,'' had just closed, tried to elucidate: ''Anthony and Allison come at the play in slightly different ways. Anthony has to connect emotionally to what the moment is. When he does that, the scene starts to blossom with the kind of nuance and attention to detail that you would imagine would be this painstaking process. But it's completely organic to him once he plugs into the emotions.

''Allison is totally different. She just will do the scene. She doesn't know how she's going to do it. But she tells herself, 'This is what is written, this is what I have to do.' In forcing herself, as painful as it is sometimes, the emotional connection just happens. That focus and concentration, that conviction, explode into this emotional reality.''

MS. MURPHY, 20, brought another attribute to the rehearsal room, Mr. Mayer said. ''She has a lack of cynicism. There's something really pure about her. That quality is a gift. And because this was her first time doing theater, she always reminded us to treasure this. Watching her learn was inspirational for everybody.''

Ms. Murphy, who has been working in Hollywood, said learning was the point. ''I'd been itching to come to New York and find a class,'' she said by telephone. ''This turned into my college.''

But Ms. Janney and Mr. LaPaglia said they owed her a debt as well. ''She teaches me,'' said Ms. Janney. ''She's so unblocked, so emotionally accessible.''

Some of the production's technical aspects might appear to an audience to interfere with the emotional connections required of the actors. Not so, said Ms. Janney and Mr. LaPaglia. It was only on the Criterion stage that they felt their performances finally clicking into place.

''At certain moments, I find myself responding to the lighting,'' Mr. LaPaglia said. ''The light hits me a certain way, and it just creates---- inspiration.'' In the scene in which immigration officers raid Eddie's apartment, Mr. LaPaglia said, ''there's a sound cue -- this incredible, high-pitched noise -- that goes right into my brain every night, and just takes me someplace emotionally.''

For Ms. Janney, it's the presence of the ''denizens'' -- 25 bustling extras who sweep on and off David Gallo's set to watch the unfolding tragedy as representatives of the larger community. ''Just feeling them around me gives me a lift,'' she said.

Ms. Janney also found help in Beatrice's physical being. She decided that the character ''should have some breasts.''

''So we gave her fake breasts, and just having them there makes my shoulders sag a little -- she's weighed down somehow.''

For Mr. LaPaglia, Eddie's physicality was ''a no-brainer.''

''He works on docks -- he's about strength: Can I lift that? Can I push that? Can I punch that guy?''

But mostly, the three actors feed off one another on stage. ''If I'm having a bad night,'' Mr. LaPaglia said, ''I just look at Allison or at Brittany and I'm right back in the play. This is what it's about: it's about trust, about the work. This is why, when I was young and stupid, I said, 'I want to be an actor.' ''