Tommy Sim’aan Archives - North West End UK

2Nov

By Aditi DalalNo Comments

London

A View from the Bridge – Rose Theatre

The Arthur Miller classic was first staged as a one act production on Broadway in 1955. This latest co-production with Headlong Theatre, Bolton Octagon, Chichester Festival Theatre and the Rose Theatre sees it in its full-length version, with the play's central themes resonating just as powerfully in today's world. Set in a working-class Italian American neighbourhood in Brooklyn, the story revolves around the complex dynamics within the Carbone family. Eddie Carbone (Jonathan Slinger) is a longshoreman who becomes increasingly obsessed with his niece, Catherine (Rachelle Diedericks). Tensions escalate when two Italian immigrants, Marco (Tommy Sim’aan) and Rodolpho (Luke Newberry), move in with the Carbone family, leading to a dramatic confrontation as Eddie's jealousy and cultural clas...

A View From The Bridge – Octagon Theatre

It isn’t often that one goes to see a production and as the final ‘curtain’ falls the audience appear to be engaged in a collective holding of breath, momentarily stunned to silence. This was the case tonight as the Octagon Theatre Bolton launched its Autumn/Winter season with the Arthur Miller masterpiece ‘A View From the Bridge’. Set in the Italian - American neighborhood of Red Hook in Brooklyn, New York in the 1950s, this tragic play tells the story of Eddie Carbone, an ordinary working man who develops an improper and obsessional love for Catherine, his wife Beatrice’s orphaned niece, and to whom he has been a father figure since her childhood. This obsession is put under unbearable strain when Beatrice’s cousins, Marco and Rodolpho illegally enter the country from their work starv...

Starcrossed – Wilton’s Music Hall

While in Verona a few years ago, I was lucky enough to eat Polpette di cavallo at Osteria Sottoriva, the oldest eatery on the medieval arcade that runs along the bank of the Adige river. That city in Veneto, Italy is the romantic setting for Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and The Two Gentlemen of Verona. One can ponder the balcony and courtyard said to have inspired our William’s tale of feuding families and adolescent co-dependence. Sadly, it’s an architectural fiction (from the 1930s) and a cynical ploy for travellers’ coins. Despite this deceit, it’s a scene of frenzied selfies and chaotic milling from pushy tourists. Truth and accuracy are far less alluring than the illusion of romance. Did Shakespeare visit Verona? There is no evidence of it, so while Romeo and Juliet rema...