Broken Glass

Personal tragedy and international atrocity collide in Arthur Miller's 1994 play Broken Glass, about a Jewish woman in 1930s New York who is struck down by a mystery illness after reading news reports about events in Germany.

The play is set at the time of Kristallnacht, the co-ordinated Nazi assault on Germany's Jewish population known as 'the night of broken glass' owing to the destruction of thousands of homes and shops.

As one would expect from Miller, there are plenty of multi-faceted characters, brilliant exchanges and weighty themes woven in this thoughtful 'whatdunnit'-style thriller. However, the play's historical context ultimately overwhelms the domestic drama that it frames.

There's strong work from the six-strong cast of this production by Rapture Theatre, the East Kilbride-based company that specialises in lesser-known works by major playwrights. Crucially, New York accents are all present and correct. The tone occassionally shifts unexpectedly to comedy (and repeated blasts of music during scene changes begin to grate), the scenes between Stewart Porter's unravelling businessman Phillip and his wheelchair-bound wife Sylvia (Fletcher Mathers) are never less than compelling. There's also first-class support from Kirstin Murray in the small but significant role of the doctor's wife.

It might sound churlish to complain about static scenes in a play about hysterical paralysis, but Lyn McAndrew's naturalistic bedroom set is frustratingly limiting. Characters perch awkwardly around an ottoman when presumably the setting is a formal reception room, and much of the downstage action at Eastwood Theatre was frustratingly murky, with actors disappearing into shadows mid-sentence.

The latter issue is presumably one of the pitfalls of such an ambitious touring schedule, which will hopefully be ironed out.