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theatreguys 
Broken Glass.
Totally agree with the ending Mike and all that you have said.
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At the top of the list of Current Concerns in this troubled year of 2026 are two important subjects – Antisemitism and Mental Health Issues. And here is a play about both. It is set in 1938, was written by Arthur Miller in 1994 and is now revived looking not a moment out of date. The times of course have changed but the problems remain. The play takes a symbolic moment of history, Kristallnacht in Germany, when Jews were being persecuted by the Nazis and the news was spreading around the world. But this is not the play’s subject. That focuses on the troubled marriage of Philip and Sylvia Gellberg. Philip hates himself for being a Jew, has changed his surname from Goldberg, wishes to focus on his work on mortgage foreclosures, and disassociates himself from the Jewish situation. It should be remembered that members of many persecuted minorities wish they were not who they are. Philip’s wife Sylvia, loved yet bullied, and ignored in the marriage bed, is unhappy and further disturbed by the news headlines from Germany. She finds herself paralysed, unable to walk. Doctor Harry Hyman is on hand to try to understand and resolve the issue.
Audiences may respond differently to the play and the problem it explores – believe or disbelieve in the situation. Some factual details we have to accept – the historical situation and the view from America at that time as reported in the News – but the psychology is not so easy to understand. Remember that doctor Harry categorically rules out any physical reason for Sylvia’s paralysis so, consciously or subconsciously, the trouble must be in her head. We observe Philip and recoil – an incredible intense and short-fuse performance from Eli Gelb of aggression used as a defensive reaction . We can see why Sylvia, Pearl Chanda portraying the wife’s warmth and fragility, is emotionally disturbed with a need to protect herself from her husband and the world news – both are inseparable in her mind as Jewish problems. Her immobility is her barrier of self-defence.
Central to the play is Doctor Harry Hyman, the middle-man between Philip and Sylvia who is friends with the couple. He admits he’s “not a psychologist” but neither are we so he is in a good position to investigate the situation for us, and of course for his ‘patients’. Alex Waldmann plays him with an amiable persistence, and we can easily understand any trespass across the doctor/patient border.
The production is simple and direct, casting the audience as close observers of every forensic detail in this fracturing marriage, in this battle of opposing Jewish responses to a troubling world situation. The threats in Germany are viewed as personal back home in Brooklyn. The other players manoeuvre the plot’s jigsaw pieces to gradually complete the full picture. It’s an emotional and tense two-hour progress which never falters.
There has to be a solution to the play’s somewhat complex and some would say psychologically dubious set-up. For me the chosen resolution brings the play to a sudden and satisfying solution. Others may disagree. Given Miller’s premise and the entangled Jewish opinions he presents us with, Sylvia’s ‘cure’ when it comes is theatrically inevitable. That’s great writing. And all involved here create a knock-out experience. Shattering, some might say.
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Broken Glass
A spiral of emotions ,such an intense play with tremendous acting Impossible not to remain absorbed.
I agree with Monica those who didn’t go missed a treat.
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