Broken Glass – Arthur Miller

Exarchia Theatre

First performance: October 26, 1995

[…] Broken Glass takes place in Brooklyn in late November 1938, a few days after Kristallnacht. America, still under the influence of the Great Depression and, according to Miller, “in complete intellectual and moral disarray”, appears largely unaware of the events unfolding in Europe. Sylvia Gellburg, however, is both fully alert to the situation and paralysed, although it remains unclear, at least for now, whether her paralysis is due to this or something else. The fact is that she has other problems stemming from her relationship with her husband, a successful executive who has struggled to accept his Jewish identity – to which he reacts ambivalently – and plagued by deep insecurity about his sexuality. […] The characters in the play primarily wrestle with the demons within themselves. When faced with a painful truth, they choose to escape, but there comes a moment when this defensive tactic becomes a source of unbearable pain that crushes them and renders them completely helpless. […] In Broken Glass, it is not only glass that shatters and splinters; society itself ruptures, and the relationships between people break irreparably. […]

Christopher Bigsby, Miller’s Journey to “Broken Glass”. From the performance programme.