Marco in a View from a Bridge Essay

Give advice to an actor playing Marco on how he should present the character Marco is a character of two faces. At the beginning of the play, a grateful and respectful man is presented to the audience. He shakes Eddie’s hand, and makes it clear that he does not want to impose – ‘when you say go, we will go’. This is in stark contrast to the absolute lack of respect your character gives Eddie later in the story, and the more-so you can make this the better the reception will be from the audience. Marco is also quite a reserved character. When the two men first come to the house, Marco speaks only in short sentences, rarely elaborating on his point. However, he also seems to have a quiet authority and this is shown in stage directions when Eddie ‘is coming more and more to address Marco only’. This authority is also shown when Rodolpho starts to sing, saying ‘You’ll be quiet, Rodolpho.’ silencing his brother. This reservation is also shown in his realistic sense of mind, compared to his brother who has possibly unreachable dreams. He is also not as flamboyant or elaborate as his brother, who sings, cooks and sews; he is a ‘regular bull’. This makes others respect him and this sense of authority and strength needs to be portrayed. In the scene where Marco shows his strength by lifting the chair one-handed, the tables start to turn. The respect Marco once had for Eddie seems to have disappeared suddenly, as Marco menacingly holds the chair over Eddie’s head. On the surface, it looks as though he is protecting his brother, but the underlying reasons are mainly that by doing so, Marco has just proved Eddie’s inferiority. This enjoyment of feeling superior mixed with the defence of his brother makes Marco a fierce character in this scene, and a character that may have been shadowed in earlier scenes come to prominence in the play, and this continues in the later parts. The character then follows a vicious path of revenge after realising that is was Eddie that reported them to Immigration. Your character loses sympathy with the audience due to this, and as you lose sight of everything else – why you came to America, your family etc. – the seems to be no compassion in Marco. He not only wants to kill Eddie but humiliate him as much as possible in the process. Essentially, Marco is like Eddie. A formally caring man of his family, he is an honourable man who lacks the quality of forgiveness.