Broken Glass **** TNT
Being Jewish proves a torment for married middle-aged Brooklynites Sylvia and Phillip in Arthur Miller’s powerful blend of the personal, psychological and political, written in 1994 (when he was nearly 80) but set in 1938 as news of the Nazis’ Kristallnacht rampage hit the NY headlines.
Lucy Cohu’s gentle, understated Sylvia has mysteriously become paralysed - perhaps because of her deep fears about what might follow, perhaps because of her unfulfilling marriage.
Antony Sher’s Phillip, despising his origins yet proud of what he has achieved despite them, is pasty, sweaty, uptight and unable to physically express the love he feels for his wife. He’s the polar opposite of Nigel Lindsay’s completely assimilated Jewish doctor whose interest in Lucy’s psychosomatic symptoms threatens to overstep professional boundaries in this intense and poignant revival.
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