Stunning production of Miller classic

After an evening of carousing, sauced longshoreman Eddie Carbone rumbles home with heavy steps in "A View From the Bridge." His careening and tumbling -- which also speak to his bullying nature -- tells us that he will not end well.

Even though we know his end is coming, its arrival still shocks, evoking sympathy for a browbeater who may not have been able to speak truth even to himself.

Gifted actor John Carroll Lynch plays Eddie, the problematic center of Ethan McSweeny's stunning production of Arthur Miller's psychosexual classic, which opened Friday at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis.

The volcanic staging -- a mountain range with eruptions followed by sizzling quiet -- flows like a great inflected opera. Its dark, film noir-ish passages are followed by thrilling crescendos. There is more than a touch of the ancient Greek in this tragedy, which is redolent with issues of lust, justice and immigrant dreams of America.

Set in 1955, it takes place in the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn, where Eddie and his wife, Beatrice (wise, observant Amy Van Nostrand) live with her orphaned 17-year-old niece, Catherine (the striking Robyn Rikoon). Eddie carries a forbidden passion for Catherine, with whom he is emotionally involved and who still greets him at the end of the day by jumping on him like a little girl. He has forsaken his wife, whom he hasn't touched with love in months.

When Beatrice's Italian immigrant cousins Marco (Ron Menzel) and Rodolpho (Bryce Pinkham) move into the Carbone household for a spell, it changes the dynamics. The two young men do not have their immigration papers. Rodolpho, who sings, cooks and makes dresses, enchants Catherine, to the dismay of Eddie, who sneers at the pretty boy.

They are on a collision course that will involve the whole of Red Hook. Eddie tells everyone that what he wants is respect. But as Beatrice finally says to him, he wants something else and he can't have her.

McSweeny's masterful staging, which makes excellent use of the thrust stage, underscores Miller's primal poetry. The director brings the community into the play, using the aisles to make us witnesses in Red Hook. In one visceral example near the end of the drama, Marco calls out Eddie's name from the back of the house. It could have been Stanley Kowalski in "A Streetcar Named Desire," yelling "Stel-la!" We know it announces trouble.

What makes this production so grand is that all of the elements cohere powerfully. Set designer John Arnone has given us a shadowy little house on the waterfront. The bridge itself is a dark mirage to Manhattan; its pillars and suspensions suggested in smoke.

There's peeling jazz saxophone that pulls at the primal colors of the piece, compliments of sound designer David Maddox. And the chiaroscuro, film-noir-style lighting is by Donald Holder.

All of McSweeny's principals have their moments, starting with riveting Lynch. Both he and Pinkham nail the scene where Eddie teaches Rodolpho to box, with Pinkham doing a fluid stutter step. The two actors sock it to you when Eddie kisses Rodolpho to prove to Catherine that the guy she likes is a homosexual.

Even Richard Iglewski's appropriately subdued Alfieri, the lawyer who serves as narrator and as Eddie's confessor, is beautiful. The role seems presentational, even if it could be understood as a Greek chorus.

At the end of "View," Miller has searched his characters, turning out their pockets to reveal all the longings, hurts and dreams they have carried with them. Director McSweeny goes one step further in his magnificent staging, emptying not only their pockets, but also some of their souls.

Rohan Preston • 612-673-4390