A play about “trying to lead ethical lives” on the Chichester stage

“I am from the other side of the country!”, says Nancy who is Alfieri in Miller’s A View from the Bridge at Chichester Festival Theatre from October 6-Saturday, October 28. “I am a laid-back Californian. New York is an amazing city but I always find New York very different. I am all laid-back Californian ‘don’t go harshing my mellow!’ whereas in New York even just picking up your dry cleaning is the Ring Cycle. Everything is huge emotion and shouting at each other whereas I'm from the land of Have A Nice Day! It might not be sincere but it makes things work!”

So yes, it's an alien culture to an extent, but it’s all complicated further by the questions of immigration the play deals with.

On the Brooklyn waterfront, where the fierce passions of ancestral Sicily linger, the orphaned Catherine falls for her handsome, newly arrived cousin Rodolfo – an illegal immigrant. Their romance is encouraged by her aunt Beatrice but viewed with revulsion by her uncle, Eddie Carbone, who harbours an unspoken desire…

“And what is interesting about Alfieri (who Nancy plays) is that she was born in Italy and came to America when she was 25. She is also looking at things from a distance. Alfieri is the narrator. In a way she is like the Greek chorus. Miller was thinking about this as a great tragedy but instead of the kings, he was wanting to make working men the protagonists. And Alfieri is the Greek chorus who dips in and out of the scenes. But in this production Alfieri is present in every scene and I think it seems as if she is observing everything. It's a very interesting play.

“I think you very often feel that Arthur Miller was writing about Arthur Miller but he is also writing about a time in history when people were trying to live ethical lives. You had the rise of fascism before the war and now after the war you've got the rise of McCarthyism. But he's talking about principles and he's writing about the difficulty of living those principles and I do think that's what makes it interesting.”

Nancy came to drama school in this country when she was 18 and stayed: “One thing that was interesting was that it was felt that film and TV were LA and theatre was New York and you either moved between coasts or you chose one or the other. But the great thing about London was that London had everything and there was also radio.

"I think London is an amazing city.

"You meet people and you make contacts when you're at drama school but the other thing was that I was lucky to come over to drama school at a time when a lot of really good American writers just could not get produced in America. I did a lot of Phyllis Nagy plays here.”

And so the UK became home. And now Nancy gets the chance to make her debut at Chichester Festival Theatre.“I have seen things at Chichester and I've really come to admire Chichester but I've not done anything here before.”

​Cast also includes Kirsty Bushell as Beatrice; Rachelle Diedericks as Catherine.

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