Performed with passion, the Apollinaire Theatre production of Arthur Miller’s 1955 play “A View from the Bridge,” at Chelsea Theatre Works through March 22, opens with a scene not in Miller’s script. Evoking the multicultural world within and beyond Chelsea, a chorus of actors fills the stage, each addressing the audience in a different language and ardently gesturing to stress their words. But like the people at the biblical Tower of Babel, all speak but none understand one another.

Directed by David R. Gammons, a three-time recipient of the Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Director, this production conveys the turbulent inner states of its characters through the intense performances of its multinational cast as well as the strong visual language conjured by Joseph Lark-Riley’s sets, Kevin Fulton’s lighting and Elizabeth Rocha’s expressive costumes.

Unfolding in two acts over two-anda-half hours with one 15-minute intermission, Miller sets his story of immigrants in the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn, today a hip artists’ enclave but in the 1950s, the time of the play, a tight-knit Italian American community with unwritten laws of loyalty and honor that are at times at odds with those of city and state.

Introducing and navigating both worlds is Dev Luthra’s somber Alfieri, an Italian American attorney who, like the Greek chorus in a tragedy, observes and comments on the story. He also participates in it, as the lawyer with whom the protagonist, Eddie Carbone, most openly bares his increasingly distressed soul. When, helpless to quell Eddie’s downward spiral, Alfieri seeks advice from a wise elderly neighbor, she says, “Pray for him.”

The stage set, a platform of wooden planks bordered by ropes, serves as the living room in the modest home of the Carbone family and suggests the dock where he works and, at times, a wrestling ring.

Jorge Rubio is a searing Eddie, a longshoreman who is an archetype of many a mid-1950s Italian American husband and father who had to earn a living rather than a high school diploma. He is imperious, affectionate, protective and possessive, and aspires to upward mobility for his family, working hard to feed and educate them so they can move beyond the immigrant neighborhood that sustains them, and as they leave, saying, “Don’t trust nobody.”

Unease is evident from the start as the family gathers at home at the end of the day. As apron-clad Beatrice, Eddie’s loving, long-suffering wife and the devoted mother of Catherine, her orphaned niece, Sehnaz Dirik renders her character’s increasingly conflicting roles and her gradual growth. Here, she prepares Catherine, now 17, to tell Eddie that she has been chosen for a well-paying job. Catherine seeks his blessing for her first step into adulthood.

Eddie and Catherine adore one another with an intensity that Beatrice observes with increasing wariness. As Eddie returns from work, Naomi Kim’s nubile Catherine leaps into his arms like a child. Eddie tells her she has the beauty of a Madonna but objects to her form-fitting garb. When she breaks the news, Eddie objects and then, to Catherine’s joy and Beatrice’s relief, gives his consent.

Eddie has news of his own — Beatrice’s two cousins have arrived from Italy. Undocumented immigrants, the two brothers will stay with the Carbones and join Eddie working at the docks. Marco will send money to his starving family and plans to return in a few years. His younger brother Rodolfo wants to become an American citizen. Rohan Misra’s swarthy Marco exudes dignity and strength. Andrés Molano Sotomayor’s Rodolpho is an ebullient and earnest young man with platinum blond hair.

As the days pass, Eddie observes the growing bond between Catherine and Rodolfo. An artful scene of hypernaturalism expresses his unease. Eddie faces the audience flanked by two fellow longshoremen Louis (David J. Kim) and Mike (Andre Meservey). Mike says, “That older one, boy, he’s a regular bull. …They leave him alone he woulda load the whole ship by himself.”

All they say about Rodolfo is that he has an odd way of making everyone laugh. Their faces harshly spotlit, the three laugh long and hard in unison, like wound-up robots.

In the home, the brothers’ interactions with Eddie become power plays and even a meal turns into a test of wills. Increasingly visceral scenes express these heightening tensions as well as Eddie’s deepening awareness of what he stands to lose in Catherine’s attachment to Rodolfo.

Seeing the red fabric that will become her wedding dress spread out on the floor, Eddie rolls himself in it.

In the second act, people around Eddie are taking charge of their lives. An apron-free Beatrice is smartly attired and ready to attend the wedding of Catherine, who, aglow in her red dress, joins her in imploring Eddie to join them. With such high stakes, why do they not let go of this hope?

Although Miller’s modern-day tragedy is about Eddie, and not a larger story about the immigrant experience evoked in its prelude, this compelling production shows how all are terribly tied together in one man’s downward spiral.

ON THE WEB

Learn more at apollinairetheatre.com