LOVE triangles involving fathers and sons and the drama of family relationships are said to be at the core of Arthur Miller's major plays such as Death of a Salesman.

But in A View From the Bridge the tragic element in the two-act play centres on longshoreman or dockworker Eddie Carbone, his obsession with his niece Catherine and his jealousy when she meets and falls for the younger Rodolpho, one of two of his wife's cousins, the other is Marco - both illegal immigrants from Italy.

If you happen to have seen Luchino Visconti's film Rocco and His Brothers you'll have an idea of the drift of Miller's drama, which he first sketched out as a one-act verse play 60 years ago called A Memory of Two Mondays.

Listening to Dempsey and Makepeace star Michael Brandon speak some of the lines it's easy to understand why the great American playwright first conceived of it as a verse drama.

The play is set in Red Hook, in the Brooklyn area known as Little Italy. The gangster Al Capone learned his trade there. His mentor Johnny Yale, whom Miller mentions in the play, was cut in half by sub-machine gun fire from Capone's gunmen in 1928.

In the 1950s Red Hook was a dockside slum that people tried to get away from by crossing the bridge.

Michael Brandon was born in Brooklyn in 1945. He said: "My family went from Brooklyn to Queens and from Queens to Long Island. Sixty years ago you were due a better life across the bridge. Now people are going the other way, Brooklyn is trendy."

In the drama he plays Alfieri, a lawyer who narrates the story and comments on it. "Gangsters are in the background. This lawyer works the neighbourhood. He knows the longshoremen, he knows about the illegal immigrants. He's getting paid off on the inside, working both ends against the middle.

"Miller knew the poverty of the area. Someone told me he lived part of that life and met a lawyer who told him the story that he used for the play," he added.

Eddie, played by Jonathan Guy Lewis, is used to laying down the law about how things should be around him. He pays for Catherine's tuition and objects to her taking a job before finishing her course.

Suspicious that Rodolpho wants to marry Catherine to get US citizenship, Eddie rats on Rodolpho and Marco to the immigration service. This slices through the social protocol of the neighbourhood and leads to the fatal confrontation between Marco and Eddie.

What would a provincial British audience get out of a drama which seems more appropriate for one of Martin Scorsese's gangster period pieces such as Goodfellas or Gangs of New York?

"It's all about law and justice, the culture clash where the old world meets the new, old Italy meets new Italy. If you come to a country you have to adapt to the laws of that country, learn the language. The failure to adapt is the essence of this tragedy," Michael said.

He should know, being a successful adapter himself. Since 1984 he has lived part of the time in London, appearing on a variety of television shows including the second series of Catherine Tate, The Bill, Dr Who, New Tricks, Hustle and as F W Woolworth in Mr Selfridge.

Two years ago he appeared on the ITV dancing show Stepping Out with his wife the actress Glynis Barber.

A View From the Bridge is on at the Alhambra from March 31-April 4, starting at 7.30pm. Tickets from 01274-432000.