Johansson Wows in A View From a Bridge

Scarlett Johansson is getting rave reviews for her Broadway debut in Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge. Here’s what the critics are saying:

• Scarlett Johansson proves to be “this season's most inspired piece of movie-star casting,” writes Elysa Gardner of USA Today. Her “youthful sensuality and capacity for good-natured goofiness constitute a perfect fit for this sheltered 17-year-old struggling to come to terms with her effect on men—her uncle, in particular.”

• View is an oft-visited play, but the performances are so strong that it feels fresh, writes Ben Brantley of the New York Times. Liev Schreiber is predictably great as said uncle, and “Ms. Johansson melts into her character so thoroughly that her nimbus of celebrity disappears.”
• This “is one of the most satisfying evenings of Miller in memory,” says Peter Marks of the Washington Post, though it “does fall prey at times to the dramatist's zealous self-righteousness.”
• That ruined it for John Simon of Bloomberg. “Schreiber and Johansson labor laudably in a lost cause,” he writes. The script aims for tragedy, but is “at best merely dramatic, at worst melodramatic.”

(More theater reviews stories.)