Alley Theatre resident actor James Black will open in the Houston venue as Eddie Carbone in a revival of Arthur Miller's A View From the Bridge, for a Sept. 29 opening. Performances began Sept. 24 for a run through Oct. 23. Stephen Rayne (Royal Shakespeare Company) directs.

Black made his Broadway debut as Butch O'Fallon, the prison leader in the Circle in the Square production of Tennessee William's "lost" play, Not About Nightingales, for which he received a Theatre World Award. In his 11th season with the Alley, Black has portrayed a wide variety of characters, from Roy Cohn in Angels in America, Buzz Hauser in Love! Valour! Compassion!, the title role in Macbeth, Agatha Christie's detective Hercule Poirot in Black Coffee and multiple roles in Mere Mortals.

A View From the Bridge takes place in an Italian-American community in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge where unhappy longshoreman Carbone becomes dangerously obsessed with his young niece Catherine. When she decides to marry one of his wife's cousins, Carbone plots to do all he can to destroy Catherine's relationship with the other man. View received a successful, Tony Award-winning revival at the Roundabout Theatre in the 1997-98 season. Anthony LaPaglia and Alison Janney starred in that production, which then transferred to the Neil Simon Theatre, eventually with Tony Danza replacing LaPaglia.

Joining Black in the Bridge cast are Alley resident actors James Belcher (Mike), Annalee Jefferies (Beatrice Carbone), Charles Krohn (First Immigration Officer), Alex Allen Morris (Louis), Black's fellow Not About Nightingale's cast member Noble Shropshire (Alfieri), John Tyson (Tony) and Kevin Waldron (Marco). Also in the cast are Ty Mayberry as Second Immigration Officer and Sabrina Veroczi as the object of Carbone's desire, Catherine.

Tickets for Bridge are $49-$19 and available by calling the Alley box office at (713) 228-9341 ext. 350. The Alley Theatre is on the web at http://www.alleytheatre.com. -- By Christine Ehren