00:00 Good morning, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor for Sussex Newspapers. Now, Arthur
00:06 Miller's A View from the Bridge will be the final main house production in the 2023 summer
00:11 season at the Chichester Festival Theatre. And Jonathan Singer, you are playing Eddie.
00:17 You're up and running with the production already. It sounds like we're in for something
00:20 really intriguing, really special, really striking.
00:25 Yes. Yeah, it's a great production. We have taken some fairly new and bold choices with
00:39 it, which I think are working really well. It's a great cast and Holly's been wonderful
00:46 to work with. So yeah, we're looking forward to it.
00:50 And astonishingly, it's the first Arthur Miller, apparently, in Chichester. And this is a play
00:54 that goes back more than 70 years, but you're saying it's a play that really will speak
00:57 to us now in terms of what it says about immigration.
01:01 I think so. I think it says a lot. It has certain very prescient issues surrounding
01:08 immigration and the difficulties that new immigrants come up against in countries that
01:15 they immigrate to. But it's also a love story on many different levels. And a sort of a
01:26 very powerful story with a lot of relatable issues that I think any family can relate
01:33 to.
01:34 Yeah. And it's going to be interesting for you to be back in Chichester, because I'm
01:37 sure that will prompt all sorts of memories of Crave, which was a remarkable production
01:42 that had a truly remarkable time, wasn't it?
01:46 It was. I mean, I have to say, I was guilty of when they came to me with it and they suggested
01:55 that I might want to do it. I remember reading the play and thinking, crikey, is this the
02:02 sort of play to reopen Chichester Festival Theatre after six months of lockdown?
02:08 In normal times, it would never have been on the main house, would it, Ru?
02:11 No, I guess not. But it worked fantastically well. It was the most... I had such a brilliant
02:18 time working on that show.
02:19 From the audience point of view, I don't think we really knew what was going on, but it felt
02:24 right at the time, didn't it?
02:26 No, well, neither did we, really. I mean, we just we had a fantastic time rehearsing
02:31 it. But when the lights went down on that very first show that we did there and the
02:37 whole audience just erupted into sort of cheers and spontaneous applause because they felt
02:42 like they'd been let out of their creative dungeons.
02:46 One of the most memorable nights ever at the Festival Theatre.
02:51 It was. It was really special. It was just a shame that third lockdown or whatever it
02:57 was curtailed our live run and we had to sort of finish it on a streaming. But it was a
03:03 fantastic experience. I loved it.
03:05 Fantastic. We're really nice to speak to you and have a very, very happy return to Chichester.
03:10 Thank you.
03:11 Thanks very much. Cheers, Neil.
03:12 Thank you.
Comments