Theatre review: Broken Glass

After a wobbly start to the Young Vic's new regime - a Mr Sloane that bafflingly ironed the gay out of Joe Orton, and a Bengal Tiger that was just baffling in general - it settles into a stronger groove with Jordan Fein's take on Arthur Miller. The Broken Glass in his 1994 play is Kristallnacht, the 1938 attacks on Jewish businesses that became the first major sign of the extent to which Nazi Germany was willing to turn its antisemitic rhetoric into action. As stories and photos appear in the newspapers worldwide, New Yorker Sylvia Gellburg (Pearl Chanda) suddenly loses the ability to walk. Referred to Dr Hyman (Alex Waldmann,) he and the experts he consults with are unable to find a physical cause for her disability, and he starts to lean towards theories of something psychosomatic: Confronted with both these brutal images and everyone around her's seemingly blasé responses to them, part of Sylvia has shut down.

But in a story with elements of a psychological mystery, her response to the situation in Europe might have got wrapped up in her mind with her relationship with her husband Phillip (Eli Gelb.)

Phillip is a conservative Republican with controlling and even abusive tendencies, an accountant and advisor to a real estate magnate (Nigel Whitmey) and, in something that becomes a theme, proud of being the first and only Jew hired by the company. His inward self-hatred can look suspiciously like outward antisemitism, and the pieces start to come together about why his wife's brain is finding it hard to separate her reaction to him from that to the Nazis.

This puzzle-like element is one of the things that draws you into a play full of very dark themes; another is the relationship between doctor and patient, which always feels on the verge of tipping over into something far less professional. Chanda is characteristically good in a role that puts her at the focal point while rarely allowing her to move, there's a real charm to her relationship with Waldmann and a real tension to the one with Gelb's monolithic Phillip.

There's obvious modern relevance in the story of people turning, if not a blind eye to the rise of the Far Right, then a deliberately myopic one that says "it could never happen here." Miller even gives Dr Hyman a background in Germany - ironically because it was more tolerant than the US of admitting Jews into medical school - to build up Sylvia's horror at the gentle, cultured people he remembers standing back and letting this happen. Rosanna Vize's set commandeers the front row of audience seating, piling it up with newspapers from both the 1930s and recent weeks.

But what feels even more contemporary is the theme of people's mental health cracking under the pressure of constant news of horrors from around the world. If Sylvia is crippled by newspapers, what hope is there for anyone with a smartphone? Nancy Carroll and Juliet Cowan as Hyman's wife and Sylvia's sister respectively are criminally underused, but otherwise this is a very satisfying if intense evening.

Broken Glass by Arthur Miller is booking until the 18th of April at the Young Vic.

Running time: 2 hours 5 minutes straight through.

Photo credit: Tristram Kenton.