‘My view from the bridge’

'HI, it's Michael," comes the familiar Brooklyn drawl. My first reaction of saying, "Michael who?" was quickly replaced with the realisation that a tentative discussion about a phone interview that day with Michael Brandon sometime between 11am and 1pm had awkwardly become an unprepared reality.

While I frantically gathered a notebook and my thoughts, the view of a man about to star in A View From The Bridge at Darlington Civic Theatre was pretty laidback. He is, after all, a veteran of stage and screen, who is still best-remembered for playing TV's over-excited Lt James Dempsey to wife Glynis Barber's frostier Makepeace.

"I'm just catching a few rays for the vitamin D or whatever it is," says the actor who has just emerged from rehearsals.

If the play is the thing, A View From The Bridge is not one of Arthur Miller's most famous works, comments Brandon. "It's been underrated, but it is a beautiful work and a classic work and it is part of the centenary celebrations of Miller's birth. I've never done this play before. In the old days I'd have been Eddie Carbone (the tragic New York longshoreman with an unhealthy obsession for his niece Catherine), but now I'm Mr Alfieri (the narrator, who is also the area's Italian-American lawyer)," Brandon says.

He met with Touring Consortium Theatre director Stephen Unwin and did some research into the 1950s Brooklyn Bridge background of the play, but confesses he was anxious about three other productions of the play – which was first performed exactly 60 years ago – also being planned.

"But, then all of a sudden it's totally happening and the role of Alfieri is preferable to me because Carbone goes through all the suffering that the character must. And you know what, Alfieri is the voice. He is the view from the bridge and he's between the two cultures because he was born in Italy, but is now an American. He's got his education and he's moved up from the neighbourhood, but didn't move on. He uses his education to help the people from Brooklyn," he says.

Brandon, who was born Michael Feldman, has a huge advantage over the other cast members like Jonathan Guy Lewis, who is playing the self-destructive Eddie; Teresa Banham, Daisy Boulton, James Rastall, Philip Cairns, Orestes Sophocleous, John Alistair, Paul Chesteron and Ben Woodall... he comes from the same tough Brooklyn streets as Miller's characters.

"Did I have advantage? Absolutely. The rest of the cast is English, the director is English and I'm from Brooklyn. I was born ten minutes from where this takes place. I came from the slum of Brownsville, Brooklyn, where Mike Tyson is also from. His book made it sound like vomiting because it was such an awful life. We grew up as kids in gangs and people carried gravity knives because you could fire down the push button to make the blade swing out faster. In each neighbourhood invisible lines were drawn which stretched from block to block..." he breaks off because someone standing next to him starts smoking.

"That's disgusting, she's blowing smoke in my face," he says in all seriousness.

You can take the boy out of Brooklyn, but you can't take Brooklyn out of the boy, Brandon jokes. "If you're born in New York, everywhere else is a small town," adds the actor who found his way out of the area because his mechanic father, Sol Feldman, looked to improve the family fortunes with moves to Flatbush, Queens and Valley Stream.

"He used to work seven days a week, and I think I was conceived in a tow-truck," he says.

Brandon recalls that residents talked "from one stoop to another" and that the kids played stoop ball where one tried to bounced a ball over the other one's head.

"My dad got his own gas station near Ebbets Field, where the Brooklyn Dodgers used to play, and every now and again a ball would come flying out and bounce off the tarmac, especially when Mickey Mantle (from the New York Yankees) was playing," Brandon adds.

The actors only previous meeting with Miller's work came with college script-readings of All My Sons and Death Of A Salesman. He appeared on stage recently in The Long Road South and earned an Offie nomination for best supporting male actor. Before that he appeared in Singing In The Rain at Chichester and the West End.

"I get to do these things because they are American classics.... and I am an American classic," says Brandon, who was also offered Twelve Angry Men in the West End just before A View From The Bridge came along. "Which, I didn't want to do. Twelve men on a stage didn't excite me very much. I think I opted to continue doing the TV series Episodes, which I'm still doing."

Brandon plays Eliot Salad, a TV company boss on the BBC2 series created by David Crane and Jeffrey Klarik about a British husband-and-wife writing team who go to Hollywood to remake their successful British sitcom with Friends star Matt le Blanc.

He agreed to do the tour of A View at the same time as wife Glynis landed a West End role in Beautiful – The Carole King Musical.

"I was able to go to the opening because we were still rehearsing in London. I had known Carole and been to her house and had barbecues in California. I know her music so well that it's imbibed in me. I'm sitting there thinking that the kids don't really know the songs of Tapestry," says Brandon.

He confesses to doing a little subtle coaching with fellow cast members and, of course Glynis, who is playing Carole King's mother.

"The voice coach has given a few pointers because I've lived in the UK for 30 years and I'm British now. Glynis' is going through the same thing because her character, Mrs Klein, is from New York. So, we sitting there at home putting on New York accents and my son comes down and says, 'You're both crazy'."

•  A View From The Bridge, Darlington Civic Theatre, March 17 to March 21. Box Office: 01325-486555 or darlingtoncivic.co.uk