By Harry Mottram: Artistic director of Axbridge Community Theatre John Bailey has put together a first class cast for his production of Arthur Miller’s play Broken Glass. Part psychological detective story and part political drama the action centres on a middle-aged woman, Sylvia Gellburg, afflicted by a mysterious paralysis of the legs. The cause? Possibly the news of Hitler’s Nazi thugs on Kristallnacht smashing Jewish owned shops, burning synagogues and beating and murdering Jews in the street. Or is it something else like her relationship with her husband Phillip and his ambivalent attitude to his own Jewishness? Enter Dr. Harry Hyman who believes Sylvia’s paralysis is psychosomatic and begins to treat her as tensions rise in the married couple’s relationship.
Written in 1994 by the former husband of Marilyn Monroe the play is set in 1938 in the Gellburg’s New York home and explores how a relationship and its break down can be influenced by outside events. Today there are family and relationship debates over the War in Gaza and the way Israel and Jews around the world are conflated creating arguments that are hard to untangle through the prism of history. Likewise Moslems here and abroad are also caught up in arguments over the situation in the Middle East with a polarisation of attitudes – which in turn have consequences in relationships. You only have to read some of what is written on social media to realise how these events can have an effect on brother and sister, husband and wife and so on. Broken Glass is an emotionally charged and compassionate play by one of the 20th century’s greatest dramatists and remains just as relevant today as it did when it was written.
Kristalnacht (Crystal Night) took place across Germany in November 1938 in which Nazi thugs smashed the windows of Jewish owned shops, ransacked businesses’ and burned down synagogues as well as killing scores of innocent Jews. Tens of thousands of mainly Jewish men were rounded up and placed in concentration camps as a prelude to the Holocaust.
The cast of six are as follows: Sylvia Gellburg is played by newcomer to ACT Jo Case from Bridgwater who is no stranger to acting having been involved in productions in Taunton and Bridgwater and said she was ‘thrilled to have landed the role of Sylvia’. Her stage husband Chris Jarman plays Phillip Gellburg – Chris was one of the narrators in Axbridge Pageant and has played numerous roles for ACT productions including Macbeth in the Shakespeare tragedy and Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream directed by Tony Leach who portrays Dr Harry Hyman in this production. His partner in real life and his stage wife Margaret Hyman in the drama is played by Katie Underhay who has a long list of credits to her name including the long suffering Bella in ACT’s Gaslight. Harriet is played by ACT regular and talented actress Sian Tutill while ACT stalwart Phil Saunders completes the cast as Stanton Case.
Arthur Miller is one of America’s greatest 20th century playwrights having penned All My Sons (1947), Death of a Salesman (1949), The Crucible (1953), and A View from the Bridge (1955). He wrote several screenplays, including The Misfits (1961) which featured a cast that included his wife Marilyn Monroe as well as Clark Gable and Montgomery Clift.
A Tony Award nominee Broken Glass was first staged in 1994 at the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut and then opened on Broadway at the Booth Theatre later that year running to 73 performances and 15 previews. It was revived to five star reviews with Antony Sher as Phillip and Lucy Cohu as Sylvia at the Tricycle Theatre in Kilburn, London in 2010, before transferring to the Vaudeville Theatre in the West End in 2011.
The play takes place in Axbridge Town Hall from Wed 26-Sat 29 March, 2025, nightly at 7.30pm and in Bristol at the Alma Tavern Theatre from 1 Tue-Weds 2 April at 8pm.
Tickets online at: https://sites.google.com/site/axcomtheatre/broken-glass
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