THEATER REVIEW: BROKEN GLASS

Sylvia (Susan Angelo) and Phillip (Michael Bofshever) in Broken Glass. Photo Credit: Hope Oklahoma.

Before Passover

By Ed Rampell

Arthur Miller is our very own American Shakespeare. Miller’s best known for Death of a Salesman, his 1949 scathing critique of capitalism; All My Sons, his acerbic look at war profiteering; his metaphorical McCarthyism dramas, 1953’s Salem witchtrial-set The Crucible and 1955’s A View From the Bridge; and he’s also rather famous for his marriage to Marilyn Monroe.

Broken Glass is one of the lesser-known works in the Miller canon. It only ran 73 performances when it opened on Broadway in 1994, although it was Tony-nominated. And Broken Glass is also probably this Jewish playwright’s most Jewish play.

At its core Broken Glass explores what it means to be a Jew in America, so it’s appropriate that it is being presented by the West Coast Jewish Theatre. While Dr. Harry Hyman (Stephen Burleigh) hasn’t changed his name, this equestrian physician who wears riding boots in his medical office and rides his trusty steed in the rural hinterlands of 1930s Brooklyn (hard to believe!) is a self-avowed atheist who married the shiksa, Margaret (Peggy Dunne), from Minnesota. Phillip Gellburg (Michael Bofshever) is a self-denying Jew, who is introduced to us in a scene where he spells his name, in order to dispel the notion that he’s a “Goldberg.” Phillip has broken glass ceilings by working for a gentile real estate-related firm by foreclosing properties (now there’s a timely reference), and using his WASPy boss’ (a Tory yachtie played by Stanton Chase) influence to get his son into West Point to become a career Army officer.

But then there’s Phillip’s wife, Sylvia (Susan Angelo). Although not particularly religious, as Hitler’s “final solution to the Jewish question” engulfs European Jewry, she internalizes the looming fate of her people. Despite being “safely” ensconced thousands of miles and an ocean away in America, newspaper accounts of the Nazis’ 1938 night of terror called Kristallnacht have a curious effect on the panicky Sylvia: She is literally paralyzed. (Imagine how terrorized poor Sylvia would have been had she been bombarded by our 24/7 news cycle on cable TV, the Internet, etc.!)

Miller uses paralysis and impotence to probe the condition of the Jews as the Holocaust approached. He seems to have a Reichian analysis, cannily linking political repression to sexual dysfunction. The play’s title refers to Kristallnacht, or “the night of Broken Glass,” but also, perhaps, to the sexual symbolism of the Jewish wedding ceremony custom of the groom stomping on a drinking glass wrapped in a cloth, which represents deflowering. It’s interesting to note again the doctor’s last name, which sounds like “hymen” and is another reference to devirginization. (Interestingly, Dr. Hyman, who has a reputation for being promiscuous, calls himself a “socialist” -- psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich was a German Jewish Communist who believed the revolution would liberate libido.) It’s all grist for the Miller mill.

While Sylvia’s hysteria is intensified and amplified by the Nazi pogroms, her marital problems long preceded the Shoah. In illumining her soul Miller reveals that Phillip’s refusal to allow his wife to continue her career once they married has contributed to her inner paralysis. But by 1994, a quarter or century after the rise of the feminist movement, this and some of Miller’s other observations are hardly original.

Nevertheless, Broken Glass is a powerful drama adroitly directed by Elina de Santos (who previously helmed All My Sons for the Odyssey Theatre Ensemble) and the 99-seat Pico Playhouse was sold out the night I saw the play. WCJT’s production of this lesser known Miller play is well worth seeing and well acted by an ensemble cast. Peggy Dunne skillfully reveals the ruefulness beneath Margaret’s mirthfulness, which conceals a painful nervousness caused by her husband’s philandering. Broken Glass is at its best when it delves into the helplessness of the Jews as they confronted fascism’s floodwaters. Do you remember that pathetic look on Hannah’s (Paulette Goddard) face -- which Charlie Chaplin so movingly captured in his 1940 masterpiece, The Great Dictator -- as the Nazis invaded yet another country in their anti-Jewish jihad and crusade? Born Marion Pauline Levy, like her character Hannah, Goddard was a Jew.

More insightful and revelatory is the Jewish playwright’s depiction of the psychological dilemma and anguish of the Jew in America. Should he/she assimilate? Or embrace his/her heritage and legacy? In Broken Glass, Miller shows himself to be on a par with those other great Jewish-American writers who grappled with these tense, thorny issues, such as Phillip Roth, author of novels such as Portnoy’s Complaint.


Broken Glass runs through April 17 at the Pico Playhouse, 10508 W. Pico Blvd., L.A., CA 90064. For info: 323/860-6620; www.wcjt.org or www.picoplayhouse.com