Miller's tale.

Byline: Paul Denison The Register-Guard

`A View From the Bridge,' the late Arthur Miller's drama about a man destroyed by his own passion and an unbending communal code, can be seen as an ancient Greek tragedy that the playwright smuggled into Brooklyn, N.Y., in the 1950s.

The characters are Italian-American immigrants, but one of them has a fatal flaw and commits a single act from which tragic consequences inexorably flow, with a single narrator providing play-by-play commentary.

``Miller intended from the start to find a single story line that he could follow through in a very direct attack,'' says University of Oregon theater arts professor Jeffrey Mason, who is directing the University Theatre production that opens Friday in the Robinson Theatre.

Mason says Miller's first version, a one-act written partly in blank verse, "hit like a hammer."

He says the two-act version, with expanded roles for two female characters, has a second half "like an express train out of control" but begins with "a very quiet domestic scene" to which he and his cast are trying to add more intensity.

The basic situation is intense enough, as Mason explains it.

Eddie and Beatrice live in Red Hook, near the Brooklyn Bridge, with their niece, Catherine, whom they have raised as their own child. But Catherine is a young woman now. She is going to secretarial school and getting ready to move out and begin life on her own.

Although he doesn't realize it - a point that Mason considers crucial - Eddie has fallen in love with his niece.

So when two desperately poor cousins from Sicily come to live with the family and Catherine falls in love with the younger of the two, Eddie acts to keep them apart. He thinks he's just protecting Catherine, as he always has. But others, including his wife, can see that he has a passion for the girl.

"When Beatrice hurls this at him," Mason says, "he's horrified."

But it's too late. Trying to get rid of his rival, Eddie makes a move that puts him at odds with an Old World code that is still fiercely strong among the immigrant dockworkers, setting in motion an unhappy chain of events.

Miller was not Italian, but he and his parents lived among them in Brooklyn after his father's stock market losses during the Depression forced the family to move down from the Upper West Side.

In "A View From the Bridge," Miller's art apparently imitated life. At a scholarly conference in Brooklyn last year, Mason heard the playwright tell a story about a workingman who came to see this play night after night and always cried at the end.

When someone finally approached him after a show and asked him why, the man said that he had known the family and Miller had gotten their story exactly right, except for the ending.

It turned out that the family the man knew had lived in the Bronx, which Miller said he had never visited. But they were real, and theirs was not an uncommon story back then.

"This is a story about passion and community," Mason says. "It's about what passion can do to you, and about community and law as attempts to get these enormously destructive passions under control."

Mason, who has plenty to do as head of the UO theater arts department, directs a production only every other year. He chose "A View From the Bridge" partly because he has enjoyed and studied Miller's work since he was in high school.

Mason has published two articles about Miller's plays and presented two papers about Miller at national conferences. He's also writing a book on the playwright's political theater.

Mason says "A View From the Bridge" hit the stage right in the middle of the "first big wave" in Miller's rise to prominence, from 1947 to 1964. The sequence: "All My Sons," "Death of a Salesman," "The Crucible," "A View From the Bridge," "Incident at Vichy" and "After the Fall."

The University Theatre cast features Jay Hash as Eddie, Danielle Kardum as Beatrice and Mariah Castle as Catherine. Beatrice's two cousins are played by Jordan Wolfer (Marco) and Bo Caldwell (Rodolpho).

Daniel Tuch plays Alfieri, an attorney who tries to help Eddie see that his problems are not legal but moral in nature.

The cast also includes Deric Davis, Adam Rieders, Nathan Wonder, Tyler Robbins, Logan Hall, Rudy Tyburczy, Danielle Butera, Pat O'Driscoll, Nicole De Lancie, Brittany Bilyeu, Melena Bronson and Pieter Van Den Berg.

The production team consists of Laura Hiszczynskij (choreography), Mary Jungels (set design), Elizabeth Helman (costume design), Janet Rose (lighting design and technical director), Sean Andries (dialect coach), Susan Mason (vocal coach), Jersey Knight (stage manager), Laura Lawson and Annaleah Tubbin (assistant stage managers), Sara Fix (properties manager) and Rachel Edwards (assistant properties manager).

PREVIEW

A View From the Bridge

What: University Theatre production of Arthur Miller's drama, directed by Jeffrey Mason

When: 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 7:30 p.m. March 3, then 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays through March 12; benefit performance to assist tsunami relief efforts, 2 p.m. March 6

Where: Robinson Theatre, 1109 Old Campus Lane

How much: $12 for the general public; $9 for senior citizens, University of Oregon faculty and staff, and non-UO students; $7 for ages 18 and younger; $5 for UO students

Tickets: Available through the Erb Memorial Union ticket office (346-4363) and, on performance nights only, through Robinson Theatre box office (346-4191)

CAPTION(S):

Jay Hash plays Eddie and Danielle Kardum portrays his wife, Beatrice, in the University of Oregon's production of Arthur Miller's ``A View From the Bridge.''