THERE is now double cause to celebrate the new union between the West Yorkshire Playhouse and Birmingham Repertory Theatre.

Rachel Kavanaugh's magnificent revival of Alan Bennett's Madness Of George III, grand yet very personal too, highlighted one blossoming directing talent. A View From The Bridge switches the spotlight to Toby Frow, 27-year-old recipient of an Esmee Fairbairn Foundation bursary. His theatrical vision whets the appetite like no Playhouse debut since former Selby schoolboy Matthew Warchus with his 1992 production of Calderon's Life Is A Dream. Warchus, then 25, went on to international success, Hollywood and all.

Like Madness Of George III, Arthur Miller's latterday Greek tragedy A View From The Bridge is a study of vulnerability and human frailty when strength of character is put to the test and loss of face is at risk. In George III's case, that need for respect and strength was on an international scale. For Brooklyn longshoreman Eddie Carbone (Corey Johnson), he demands respect and the honour of his name in his waterfront neighbourhood of 1950s' Red Hook, Brooklyn, the impoverished home to 21,000 immigrants.

That New York community is evoked with precise detail, from tolling bells to the crushing sound of waves to the street chatter, allied to Simon Higlett's epic set design, with its see-through skin of grimy, tall and dank Brooklyn apartments, and the moody, oppressively dark lighting of Tim Mitchell.

Picked out in a spotlight or in the glow from a brazier, ex-pat Italian lawyer Alfieri (Richard Durden, superb) fills the role of the chorus in Greek tragedy. Standing in the shadows at all times, his resonant voice is a harbinger of doom as he observes the tensions and betrayals that ensue from Eddie's over-protective obsession with his pretty orphaned niece, Catherine (Shauna Macdonald).

The tensions rise, tightening like knuckles, as Eddie's wife, Beatrice (Abigail McKern) allows her illegal immigrant cousins to stay. The taciturn, hard-working Marco (Mido Hamada) keeps to himself but platinum-blond, uninhibited Rodolpho (Jonjo O'Neill) catches more than the eye of Catherine.

From a phone hanging down like a noose for Eddie to hang himself like Judas Iscariot with his call to the immigration authorities, to the physical frisson of the power struggle between Carbone, Rodolpho and Marco, Frow's production is both imaginative yet classical in its construction and devastating in its impact. The sense of inevitable fatality and finality crushes the heart, all the more so for Johnson's lacerating performance.

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Updated: 12:11 Wednesday, October 29, 2003