Broken Glass

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About the Show

Directed by Jordan Fein, with Arthur Miller’s script and a rarely staged 1938 Brooklyn setting.

Set in Brooklyn in 1938, the play follows Sylvia Gellburg, a Jewish woman disturbed by news of escalating violence against Jewish communities in Nazi Germany. While those around her dismiss the events abroad, Sylvia becomes increasingly preoccupied, eventually suffering a mysterious paralysis. As her physical condition deteriorates, tensions rise with her husband Phillip, who suspects the affliction is psychosomatic. Her sessions with Dr Hyman reveal deeper emotional and psychological fractures in her personal life, casting new light on repression, fear, and complicity.

This Young Vic production is directed by Jordan Fein (Fiddler on the Roof), and marks a rare revival of one of Arthur Miller’s lesser-known works. With Miller’s characteristically incisive writing and Fein’s precise direction, the production brings together a skilled creative team to explore the intersection of personal trauma and historical crisis.

Critic Reviews (10)

“It’s too meandering and repetitive – but it has got several striking qualities with present-day resonance.”
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"Miller’s interrogation of antisemitism isn’t not relevant, it’s just that the political symbolism is overcomplicated by its entanglement with sexuality making it hard to detect what best to glean from Broken Glass."
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“Jordan Fein’s production leans stylistically into the play’s strangeness but features terrifically naturalistic performances.”
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"There is so much emotive power in Jordan Fein’s production...and so many chilling parallels to current political indifference to the horrors around the world, that the play’s lack of internal coherence becomes irrelevant."
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“A fascinating and fitfully brilliant production of a fascinating and fitfully brilliant play.”
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"Modish trappings aside, Miller’s tale carries a lasting sting of truth. It’s a play for today."
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“Fein’s thoughtful direction holds and tightens the corkscrewing emotions and thoughts of the play in a production that is always gripping and often devastating.”
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"Full of powerful themes and brutally unvarnished emotion, this is a knotty, confronting piece, but it lacks the focus and tragic force of Miller’s better-known plays."
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