By Neil Durham

WORTH A LOOK?: ****

WHEN?: Saturday 25 May 2024, runs through 3 September 2024 2024 RUNTIME: 140 minutes (including a 20-minute interval)

The unnaturally blond hair and high-pitched giggle of Scott Howells’ Italian immigrant Rodolpho turns the stomach of West’s dock worker Eddie Carbone and the head of his niece Catherine.

• Read on for reasons including how this production about immigrants who just want to work will have resonance in this election period and is brilliantly performed

We were a little underwhelmed when we last saw West (Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Donmar) tred the boards in London but here his Carbone is every inch what we’d expect Arthur Miller to want from the anti-hero of his 1955 play about a tight Brooklyn Italian-American community and its strong work ethic.

Carbone and his long-suffering wife Beatrice, given life by an excellent Kate Fleetwood (Ugly Lies The Bone, National Theatre), have taken in their niece who has become a young woman under their roof with Beatrice worrying about the intensity of the relationship between uncle and niece.

The pot is stirred ever more ferociously when Beatrice’s cousins Rodolpho and Marco arrive illegally from Italy and join the household as Catherine and the flamboyant Rodolpho catch each other’s eye.

Carbone convinces himself that Rudolpho ‘ain’t right’ and that his romance with his beloved niece is solely a ruse for the deceptive homosexual to win himself a green card making his stay in the US legal.

West is very good as a man in middle-aged crisis infatuated with his adolescent niece and showing a cold shoulder to his jealous wife.

This is the latest in a string of challenging roles where Scott Howells (Cabaret, Kit Kat Club and Romeo and Julie, National Theatre and pictured below) has impressed and once again here he persuades us why he could be both attractive to Catherine and threatening to Carbone.

Nia Towle’s Catherine is perfect as the naive niece who falls for the 1st attractive man to show her interest after having been over protected by her mollycoddling uncle who thinks he has her best interests at heart.

We see understudy Michael Cusick give a muscular performance as cousin Marco who doesn’t take kindly to his American job and the funds he is sending to his family back home in Italy coming under threat.

Transferring from Bath’s Theatre Royal, this excellent Lindsay Posner production about immigrants who just want to work will have resonance in this election period and is brilliantly performed by a hugely talented cast who bring the best from this Miller classic.

• Main pictures via Facebook courtesy Theatre Royal Haymarket Tickets
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