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Stars explained: * A production of no real merit
with failings in all areas. ** A production showing evidence of not
enough time or effort, or even talent, and which never breathes any real
life into the piece – or a show lumbered with a terrible script. *** A
good enjoyable show which might have some small flaws but has largely
achieved what it set out to do.**** An excellent show which shows a
great deal of work and stage craft with no noticeable or major
flaws.***** A four star show which has found that extra bit of magic
which lifts theatre to another plane. |
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Broken Glass
Hall Green Little Theatre
**** THE title of
Arthur Miller’s 1994 play come from
Kristallnacht, Crystal
Night, The Night of Broken Glass when the Nazis staged a violent pogrom
against Jews throughout Germany and Austria in November 1938. The crystals?
The shards of shattered glass from attacked and looted Jewish homes and
businesses. Berlin might have been almost 4,000 miles from Brooklyn but
for Sylvia Gellberg it was all around her in newspapers, on the radio,
in her mind. Sylvia,
played with splendid control and emotion by Mary Ruane, has become
paralysed. It was sudden, unexpected and came upon her just as she was
leaving her house to visit the cinema with her husband Phillip. The only
problem is that Dr Harry Hyman, and the specialists he has consulted,
can find no physical reason, which means the cause is psychological and
to find the reason, and a solution, demands peeling away the layers of
the lives of Phillip and Sylvia, one by one. Sylvia displays a mix of
sexuality and vulnerability, shame and longing. Phillip Gellburg – “it’s Gellberg not Goldberg” –
is perhaps the most complex of the two. Richard Woodward gives us a
night of angst and self-doubt Phillip has a love-hate relationship with his
Jewishness, proud that his son is a West Point graduate and the only
Jewish officer in the Army instead of the usual Jewish career options of
lawyer, doctor . . . There is almost shame at being Jewish and he has
a mission of distinguishing himself, and his son, from other Jews. While
his wife becomes almost hysterical with grief at the Nazi treatment of
Jews Phillip shows traits of anti-semitism, accusing German Jews of
refusing to take ordinary jobs, demanding only highly paid positions. He doesn’t just have a chip on his shoulder, it’s a whole 25kg bag of spuds, asking in despair at one point: "Why is it so hard to be a Jew?" As Dr Hyman delves deeper into the relationship
Sylvia slowly reveals her secret hopes and fears and the hidden
relationship with Phillip, while Phillip becomes more and more agitated
with an anger that spreads into his professional life. He can’t live
without her but doesn’t seem able to show it. He is quite differential to his boss, Stanton
Case, played by John Harris when we first see them together but that
becomes become tense as his life is unravelled by the doctor until an
explosion, when the confounded Case is accused of treating Phillip
differently because he is a Jew, sees Gellburg collapse with a heart
attack to take us into a dramatic climax. Roger Warren gives a fine performance as Hyman,
who trained in Heidelberg because US medical schools did not admit Jews. He shows understanding for Phillip and
compassion, even affection for Sylvia – something noted by his wife,
Margaret, a delightfully busy performance by Amanda Grant , who perhaps
remembers the good doctor’s rather less virtuous reputation as a ladies’
man in his youth. And steady as a rock we have Esther Roden as
Harriet, Sylvia’s sister, who hardly leaves her side while giving Hyman
avenues to follow. There are nice flare-ups of emotion, bouts of
despair and spates of doubt as we see the lives of Gellburgs stripped
bare by a doctor both fascinated and a little embarrassed by his probing
and discoveries. Miller never writes
about just what you see on stage. His later works are regarded as good
rather than ground breaking but Broken
Glass shows Miller’s deft skill in
writing for the stage, creating two hours of gripping tension from just
a flawed relationship. Set in New York in 1938 the play entwines several
threats from the personal level of relationships, to the reaction to the
rise of Nazism in Germany by the USA, a country where anti-semitism was
second only to racism when it came to discrimination. Is it a question of too little being done or
nothing that could be done? It is worth remembering
that just as Miller’s The Crucible,
about the Salem witch trials of the 1690s, was an allegory for
McCarthyism in the 1950s, Broken Glass,
about the treatment of Jews by the Nazis in 1938 was an allegory for the
Yugoslav Wars and its ethnic cleansing which had started in 1991. Miller writes his plays on one stage but on many
levels. There is the inherent problem with plays set in
America of the accent, which, with so much US dramas on our TV, means we
all know what authentic New York intonations sound like, but in general
the cast managed passable accents, and, much more important, they kept
them consistent which allows an audience to become comfortable with the
voices and concentrate on the words and the acting. A simple set could perhaps have been made simpler
to cut down on scene changes but in general it worked well and Andrew
Cooley’s direction kept the tension and pace moving along. There are nice touches such as the pictures on a
rear video wall of headlines in US papers and photographs of the
treatment of Jews in German along with haunting Jewish songs by
Birmingham cantor Jacob Fifer as incidental music between scenes with a
damaged chair surrounded by rubble and lit by a single spot. It is not the easiest play to watch as we see a
relationship dissected but as with all of Miller’s work it is a
rewarding experience. Well-acted, well-acted and well worth seeing. To
21-11-15 Roger Clarke
13-11-15 |
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as the successful head of mortgage foreclosures as the only Jew employed
in the history of Brooklyn Guarantee and Trust.
Her answer to everything is a nice cup of . . . cocoa.