Broken Glass (Acting Edition for Theater Productions) - Softcover

Miller, Arthur

Softcover

ISBN 10: 082221413X ISBN 13: 9780822214137

Publisher: Josef Weinberger Plays, 2002

Synopsis

This is a short play set in New York in the late 1930s. Phillip Gellburg is the only Jew in a high position at a very wasp Wall Street bank. Shortly after reading reports of Kristallnacht and seeing photographs of old Jews beaten and homeless on the streets of Germany, Philip's wife Sylvia becomes partly paralyzed, unable to move her legs. All of Sylvia's longings and fears for the Jews under Hitler are manifest in her state, which her husband can't or won't recognize as anything but hysteria. He continues to be willfully blind to events in Germany and to the anti-semitism of his own boss.

About this title

Review:

'What a fascinating play this is.'
- Fiona Mountford, Evening Standard, 11.10.2010

'A late masterpiece from Arthur Miller, written in 1994 when he was 79, it takes two mighty strands, anti-Semitism and sexual neurosis, and weaves them into a beguiling, unsettling whole.'
- Fiona Mountford, Evening Standard, 11.10.2010

'Once the issue of the Gellburgs' (lack of) sexual relations is thrown in, Miller craftily sets us wondering which one of Phillip or Sylvia is actually the more disturbed.'
- Fiona Mountford, Evening Standard, 11.10.2010

'The"broken glass" of the title of Arthur Miller's 1994 play refers in part to the shattered window panes of Kristallnacht in Nazi Germany. But the title has other resonances, too. Glass, once splintered, cannot be put back together. Running through the play is the question of whether something badly broken can ever be repaired: a marriage, an identity, a country. Miller ties the personal and the political together, as a Jewish couple living in 1930s New York react to the increasingly virulent anti-Semitism in Germany in different ways.'
- Sarah Hemming, Financial Times, 09.10.10

'Miller mixes the personal with the political with incredible skill. He places ideas about identity, assimilation, self-hate and self-acceptance into a story that grips like a thriller.'
- Dominic Maxwell, The Times, 08.10.10

'Can a distant atrocity affect a person so much they become paralysed? Arthur Miller's 1994 psycho-sexual drama ponders this question as Sylvia, a middle-aged Jewish woman in 1930s Brooklyn, is stricken with paralysis just as Hitler's brownshirts are rampaging in Germany.'
- Claire Allfree, Metro (London), 12.10.10

'Miller wrote this lugubrious, complex play in 1994, but he remembered the inter-war years, and the casual references to American anti-Semitism are more shocking than Sylvia's wasted life or Philip's curdled feelings for his people.'
- Nina Caplan, Time Out (London), 14.10.10

'Arthur Miller's only full-length play to deal with his own and every other Jew's Jewishness'
- John Nathan, Jewish Chronicle, 15.10.10

'It's a simple tale of marital grief. An American Jewish woman [...], hearing of the Kristallnacht atrocities, has become paralysed from the waist down. The quest for a cure takes her and husband, Philip Gellberg, to the deepest and darkest vaults of their stagnant marriage. Gellberg is one of Miller's great creations. An ambitious and capable financier, he has vaulted Wall Street's invisible barriers of prejudice and become second-in-command at a venerable old bank. But he remains pathetically grateful to the anti-Semites who employ him. He boasts, with genuine pride, that he's the first Jew to set foot on his boss's yacht. Yet he hates himself. He loathes his Semitic face and the suspicion it arouses among his colleagues.'
- Lloyd Evans, Spectator, 16.10.10

'its ambiguities are haunting'
- Jane Edwards, Sunday Times, 17.10.10

'The lesson the couple learns, though tragically too late, is to rise above incapacitating fear and guilt.' --- Kate Bassett, Independent on Sunday, 17.10.10

From the Back Cover:

It's the late 1930s in New York. Phillip Gellburg is an executive and the only Jew among the WASPs at a very Establishment Wall Street bank. His wife, Sylvia, is obsessed with news of Nazi Germany. After seeing a photo of old Jewish men forced to scrub the sidewalk with toothbrushes, she becomes mysteriously paralyzed in the legs. The only one who perceives Sylvia's fears and longings is Dr. Hyman - a man as passionate and empathetic as Phillip is repressed. Miller's resonant and intriguing new play is about sexual awakening, the consequences of denial, and the toll that social injustice takes on an individual. This is an extraordinarily powerful drama from America's foremost playwright.

About this edition

• Publisher: Josef Weinberger Plays
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 082221413X
• ISBN 13: 9780822214137
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 92