Writer: Arthur Miller
Director: Jordan Fein
1938. Brooklyn. A doctor’s surgery. Phillip Gellburg, a buttoned-up, Jewish property evaluator and the only Jewish person in his firm, tries to get to the bottom of his wife’s physical predicament. Sylvia cannot walk or stand. Dr Harry Hyman is stumped; her tests are clear, and she is a healthy woman. He wonders if she’s been affected by reports of Berlin’s Kristallnacht, where Nazis smashed the windows of Jewish businesses and synagogues. Sylvia Gellburg, a keen reader of the news, is shocked, frightened and disturbed by the reports. Could this, wonders Dr Hyman, be the cause of her perplexing paralysis?
We soon learn all is not well within the Gellburg marriage. Phillip is work-focused, intellectually inferior to his wife and impotent. Through a series of private visits, Dr Hyman (Alex Waldmann)—virile, intelligent, and confident, a keen rider who likes to stride around in jodhpurs and boots—becomes intimate with his patient. He is fond of Sylvia (among others), who craves closeness, understanding and a friend. “A woman who doesn’t feel love can become disoriented,” he explains to her husband. Meanwhile, after a mistake at work, Phillip is sacked by his unforgiving boss, which shatters his sense of self and causes him to have a heart attack, losing all he has worked so hard for.
The fractured and fracturing family in times of political or economic pressure is Miller’s sublime stock in trade, and this revival of Broken Glass, one of his last plays (1994), is also “one of the first times Miller speaks explicitly about his own Jewish heritage,” notes Nadia Fall, Young Vic’s Artistic Director. A thorough examination of Jewish experience and identity, Broken Glass is primarily about Philip’s journey. It is Philip who changes and learns the most in an impressive and moving performance from Eli Gelb, who assimilates into a non-Jewish professional world and internalises anti-Semitic views. He arcs from a smug, self-satisfied/self-loathing mortgage broker who denies his Jewishness and can even justify Hitler’s approach, to a vulnerable man who craves acceptance from himself, his wife and the world.
While Arthur Miller is a champion of working men’s voices and in Broken Glass, a conflicted working class, Jewish male voice, his female characters can be flatter. They can often play antagonistic roles: wanting, needy, often disrupting the male dream or goal. There’s no doubt Miller adored and admired women, yet his female characters can be more opaque with less to say. We are told Sylvia Gellburg (Pearl Chandra) is bright, well-informed, intelligent, and “vigorous,” yet her paralysis renders her passive; her needs can only be met by another man. While her paralysis provides the inciting incident for the story, her role is somehow more symbolic, as an illustration of human paralysis in times of great threat.
When Broken Glass was first performed, it was at the time of ethnic cleansing in both Rwanda and Bosnia, so it must have resonated intensely with audiences. In 2026, a time of global instability and mass displacement, we are witnessing wars in Europe and the Middle East, where Israel and America are bombing whole swathes of the region. This follows a relentless Israeli offensive in Gaza against the Palestinian people. As Doctor Hyman lucidly argues, tribalism or being persecuted is not exclusive to one group.
This contemporary relevance is visualised directorially by a thoughtful, unexpected production that has its roots in 1938 but offers many nods to today’s world with overlapping time zones. While sentimental vintage crooners usher the audience in, we see pre-paralysis Sylvia dancing like no one’s watching in a thoroughly contemporary way. While the characters all wear time-specific costumes by Sussie Juhlin-Wallén, bundles of current newspapers reveal today’s headlines.
Four world clocks: London, New York, Beijing and Berlin, eventually synchronise to one time. We’re all in this together. Stark choices by lighting designer Adam Silverman choose not to theatrically envelope the audience in shadow, but for large tracts of the show, immerse them in forensically bright, interrogation-room light. There is nowhere to hide. Are we part of the performance? Look at yourselves and each other. This is happening now. What are you doing about it?
A new production of any Arthur Miller play is always a cause for great celebration, and this version of Broken Glass is no exception. At two hours straight with no interval, this tense, thought-provoking, and at times uncomfortable production, confronts and challenges personal views, our connection to global events and responsibility to others.
Runs until 18 April 2026
