You will want to see "A View From The Bridge." For the play. For the production. For the cast.

This splendid revival, which originated at the Roundabout Theatre Company, is the capstone of an unofficial two year New York Arthur Miller festival which began with the Roundabout's revival of "All My Sons" last season and this season's Signature Theater Company salute to the master American playwright.

Miller first wrote the play as a one act which played in tandem with "A Memory of Two Mondays" on Broadway in 1955. Miller then expanded the play for a London production in 1956. In 1965 Robert Duvall starred in a long running off-Broadway production, Tony LoBianco led a 1983 Broadway revival and Michael Gambon was top- billed in a 1987 London production.

No wonder. The part of Eddie Carbone, the Brooklyn longshoreman who harbors too much love for his niece Catherine, is an actor's dream. It's a chance to play tragedy and grand emotion in the guise of kitchen sink drama. And Anthony LaPaglia is up to the challenge. But it's more than the part. It's immensely satisfying theatre.

Childless Eddie and his wife Beatrice (Alison Janney) have been looking after their niece (Brittany Murphy) ever since the death of her mother. Two Sicilian cousins, Marco (Jeffrey Donovan) and Rudolpho (Gabriel Olds) enter the United States illegally (they're called "submarines') and stay with the Carbones. When Catherine falls for Marco, Eddie's life begins to crumble.

Miller, of course, is too much a master to paint only in the greys and blacks of tragedy. The play is filled with character rich comedy which only heightens the inevitable downfall. And he's provided a sort of Greek chorus in the character of Alfieri (Robert Lupone), the neighborhood lawyer, to whom people turn only in times of major crisis.

Director Michael Mayer has populated the stages with 1950's Brooklyn denizens -- fellow longshoremen and housewives -- and, with set designer David Gallo, has created a seamless, riveting evening. If you didn't know any better, you'd think the production had salvaged some of the sets from previous occupant, "Side Show" because of the four sets of bleachers surrounding the core playing space. Mayer and Gallo move us from interior to exterior in a the blink of an eye and effectively use the theater's box seats and orchestra to create Brooklyn's Red Hook area.

LaPaglia is a major talent and it will be interesting to see where his gifts take him. His first major breakthrough was at Circle in the Square's revival of "The Rose Tattoo," and he starred in the justifiably acclaimed television series "Murder One." The man is star material for both stage and screen; his is a career to follow. My hunch is, that in future years when you say saw this performance, you'll encounter envy.

Allison Janney, who handled Noel Coward with aplomb in "Present Laughter", is equally at home as a Brooklyn housewife; there's never a feeling she's slumming. It's a lovely performance.

Brittany Murphy, whom you may remember from the film "Clueless," proves herself to be one hell of a stage actress in the role of Catherine. Her characterization helps us understand her uncle's unnatural adoration; it's a sort of "How I Learned To Drive" in the set in the fifties, where there are no clear cut blacks or whites to the situation. She's innocently flirtatious as a seventeen year old girl/woman, and there are certainly moments when we feel she's leading Eddie on.

Murphy has found a common ground where she is true to the fifties character but she's honed Catherine with an edge of nineties sensibility. Eddie asks her "Hey, what's the high heels for, Garbo?" and in that moment, she's grown up before his eyes. It's not difficult to see why he and probably a large portion of the audience have fallen in love with this charming and sexy young woman.

Don't miss this one. It's only scheduled for a ten week run and Mr. LaPaglia is, as they say, hot, so who knows if the run can be extended. LaPaglia has a couple of feature films scheduled for release and if they click we probably won't be seeing him on Broadway for some time. I have a hunch that if his film or television career soars, he'll work out time in his schedule for a return to Broadway, but by then, tickets will as be as they were for Alec Baldwin's "Macbeth"... Scarce.

The greatest risk in a transfer from off-Broadway to Broadway, aside from the fact that the financial stakes are higher, is the potential loss of intimacy.

When Elyse Sommer reviewed A View From the Bridge for CurtainUp in December of last year at the Roundabout second stage (known as Stage Right), the cast faced an off-Broadway-size audience on a "modified thrust"(partly exposed on three sides) stage. In its new Broadway home, it confronts the crowd head-on.

That the production retains its immediacy can be attributed largely to the exceptional job set designer David Gallo has done in bringing the stage out from behind the proscenium and literally down into audience (as well as up into the boxes). Married with director Michael Mayer's stylish staging and the fine acting witnessed here, the result is a continunation of the "gripping theatrical experience" Elyse raved about initially. The tone-setting crowd scenes are remarkably effective in maintaining the intensity of the performances around which they are wrapped.

My "Second Thoughts" mostly have to do with casting changes since the original review. There have been two of significance. In the role of Alfieri, the lawyer/narrator/Greek chorus, Robert LuPone has replaced Stephen Spinella. While Spinella was deemed "Convincing even though he's a bit young," LuPone (perhaps thanks to a little grayness in his hair) seems about right. His commanding presence punctuates the play's sense of helplessness and his voice telegraphs its anguish.

The other newcomer is Jeffrey Donovan as Marco (replacing Adam Trese). His performance (he's a dead ringer for a Sicilian notwithstanding his name) certainly equals if it doesn't exceed the "terrific" rating Trese earned from Elyse. His unwavering values are as strong as he is physically, and serve as one of the foundations on which this play is constructed and through which the integrity of this production is maintained.

Among the returning cast, I found both Anthony LePaglia and Allison Janney to be as splendid as Elyse's review suggests; both are thoroughly convincing throughout. I was less concerned with LePaglia's "youthfulness". Questions of his virility can be as personally tormenting (even if less valid) in his forties as later in life.

Just as the namesake of the new home of A View From the Bridge, Neil Simon, was able to do comedically in his trilogy of plays arising from life at the other end of Brooklyn, Arthur Miller opens a wide, if tragic, window into the Red Hook section of Brooklyn. There, work was precious, life was deceptively simple, horizons were low and one's name in the community was of utmost value. Somehow, the inevitability of the forces that lead Eddie Carbone to his tragic fate does not render the progression anything less than breathtaking. Perhaps, as Miller penned, "you can't cook the view," but this View certainly cooks.

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