Arthur Miller's "Broken Glass"

There was only a small audience last Saturday afternoon in York Theatre Royal for the overwhelming production of Miller's "Broken Glass". It deserves more attention.

It is one of Miller's later plays. The story presents a Jewish couple living in Brooklyn around 1938 when the persecution of Jews was taking place in the other end of the Atlantic ocean, Germany. On the one hand, it discusses the complicated problem of identity for Jews in a naked metaphor of sex: Philip (the husband) is sexually impotent and Sylvia (the wife) is sexually frustrated and suffering from a hysterical paralysis. On the other hand, the enormous controversy of anti-semitism in the 30's serves to explain the very trivial, but realistic and basic domestic conflicts.

The cast of York Theatre Royal is not unfamiliar, some of them were in the "innovative and modern" adaptation of "Macbeth" last year in the same theatre. That production of one of Shakespear's masterpieces might be still subject to criticism, but "Broken Glass" is much better or, at least to me, excellent. Damian Cruden, the director, has done a good job, and the cast is fantastic. The stage design is simple, clear and comfortable in spite of some technical problems of changes of scenes. The setting is true to the style of the 30's, but the stage designer cleverly brings the music to the audience by projecting the image of the cellist on the grand wall on the stage. Cello is such an instrument that perfectly resonates with Miller's plays.

I haven't read Miller's original but I believe this production successfully delivers the gloominess, suppression, frustration in human relationships that are very familiar to readers of the playwright's works.

It had a firm grip of me. I was in tears all the way through and almost screamed with the frustrated characters several times as the emotional highs and lows were so accurately repressed, excited and betrayed by the well-trained cast in Millerian style. The feelings of breathlessness and powerlessness haven't gone away from me.


Postscript: beautiful chandelier in York Theatre Royal