The 1950s Brooklyn waterfront setting of Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge has long since disappeared. The container revolution, beginning in the 1970s, ended forever the traditional longshoreman’s role of manually loading and unloading cargo vessels, and the ships themselves now dock in New Jersey. The more recent gentrification of Brooklyn has made working-class neighborhoods in the area equally a thing of the past.

But the themes and questions of Miller’s great work, like those of any classic, transcend any specific time or locale. What is masculinity, what is it based on, and how is it expressed? How do we as a community and country address immigration? How does a culture, or a family, deal with change?