(seen at the afternoon performance on 11th March 2026)
Just like “Shadowlands” last week, another play which premiered during the monkey’s youth is revived. First encountered at the Lyttelton Theatre in 1994, the monkey once again gets the opportunity to consider a work as a (“mature” – note inverted commas) adult.
First time around, audiences were captivated by the white curtain design and the idea that characters are metaphors for countries. There is still an argument that Nazi Germany, Poland, England and the USA are present, but director Jordan Fein this time takes a more literal approach.
This late Arthur Miller play sees the writer explore, with evident deep emotional pain, his Jewish background. Seeking meaning from the idea that the USA stood idly by while Jews were persecuted in Nazi Germany, he weaves a tale of a Jewish man living comfortably in Brooklyn as his wife worries to the point of paralysis over the news.
Her doctor is not a specialist, but is a womanizer who is more than happy to go beyond the boundaries of the doctor / patient relationship. Her husband is a bully, cowed only by his wealthy non-Jewish sailing-obsessed boss.
Around them orbit the doctor’s wife and the patient’s younger sister. Straight-talking women cutting through the male minefield.
“Everybody is persecuted, but nobody is doing the persecuting” is an idea explored on three levels. Within a marital relationship, employer / employee and ruler / population.
Phillip and Sylvia Gellburg (Eli Gelb, Pearl Chanda) are the link, railing against all three.
Gelb’s stolid presence becomes menacing as he compensates for innate ineffectuality. Unpredictable emotionally, his careful slow revelations ensure we are invested in him before we discover the truth.
Chandra is first viewed dancing behind an observation-room style window. Allowing the need for her to walk to a bed (not Fein’s finest work), her over-active mind and under-active body are received sympathetically as the state of her marriage and her treatment within it are revealed.
Alex Waldman as Dr Harry Hyman manages to demonstrate what Phillip Gellburg might have been like if blessed with greater intellect and charm. Equally rotten, Waldman hides better behind a caring professional mask.
Nancy Carroll as his wife Margaret is excellent at unmasking, but her own personality is scarcely redeemed either, in Miller style.
Only Juliet Cowan’s Harriet provides even a modicum of dignity, however skewed.
Each performance is coated in Jewish mindset, long-held faith and attitudes, many at the point of erosion by assimilation. Key to all these performances and Fein’s vision, they impress.
It is left to Nigel Whitney as Stanton Case to remind us not only how WASP America works but also how our Jewish protagonists and their history sit within that world.
Rosanna White designs a walled off reddish pink carpeted arena surrounded by Young Vic theatre benches. Clocks set to local time in four cities suddenly reset to the same time in the final moments.
Piles of newspapers (shame they could not run to a ‘period’ magazine rather than current ‘Elle’ in the 1930s waiting room), and a bed covered in even more newsprint, complete a peculiar yet oddly well-functioning designated battle arena.
Other reviewers noticed a goldfish in a bowl – must have been in the corner obscured from the monkey by seating, sadly.
Late Miller is still better than early, mid and even late work from most other writers. “Broken Glass” does not come close to the genius “Death of a Salesman,” “A View from the Bridge” or “All My Sons,” but it has greater intellectual substance than the nauseatingly over-rated “The Crucible.”
Only a playwright of this calibre is able to embrace faith, politics and relationships on three different scales and turn them into a personal journey of discovery. It proves a little too much to shape fully into a deeply affecting argument, but the pouring of ideas into the mould is compelling in itself.
3 stars