Broken Glass
Young Vic, London
★★★★☆

ARTHUR MILLER’s Broken Glass has a towering theme that grabs us from the first word and never lets us go. It’s unequivocally the work of a master, line after exquisite line combining deep emotional truth with intense political antennae, as the characters tumble helplessly through one precise story arc.

Set in Brooklyn in 1938, it tells of a middle-aged, married couple who are faced with a mysterious problem: Sylvia Gellburg has lost the use of her legs with no evident physical cause, driving husband Philip increasingly crazed. Attended on by their doctor, Harry Hyman, the couple plead individually with him for help.

Dr Hyman is perplexed, realising quickly that the cause is psychological. And, despite his own inexperience in psychiatry, he becomes obsessed with the case. Is the cause rooted in the shocking reports of anti-semitism pouring from Hitler’s Germany? Or is it to do with the death of physical affection between Philip and Sylvia, or with Philip’s constant denial of his own Jewishness? And how are these strands related?

The play captures not only the wide-reaching horror of Nazi Germany’s Kristallnacht, but also the ascendancy of psychoanalysis.

And all becomes intensely personal when the hugely attractive Dr Hyman and the lovely Sylvia begin to bond, just as Philip is revealed to have avoided sex with his wife for 20 years.

Eli Gelb – fresh from an entirely contrasting, award-winning role in Stereophonic – presents us with a fiercely uptight, bowel-clenching Philip who suffers visibly in every muscle of his body. Trapped in his estate-agent job and verging on Republican attitudes, his anxiety about status carries hints of Miller’s earlier Death of a Salesman.

Pearl Chanda brings us an ardent and wounded beauty in Sylvia. And Alex Waldman as the socialist Dr Hyman steers the whole show with his Miller-like presence and easy physicality. While there is strong, natural chemistry between all three leads, the contrast between the two men particularly strikes.

Director Jordan Fein brings a distinctive fluidity to the production, with lines tumbling into one another, bedroom merging with waiting room, and office with lounge. Rosanna Vize’s set covers a long thrust stage area where the actors literally flow from one given space to another, seemingly ignoring the piles of newspapers that litter seats and flooring: an ever-present reminder not only of German horrors in the daily news, but of active anti-semitism on their very doorstep in Brooklyn. And Adam Silverman’s lighting jumps deftly from full auditorium illumination to confined flickering in line with the characters’ switch from full, conscious awareness to haunting, sub-conscious fears.

It’s a marvellous play, but with a somewhat messy conclusion that can have resonance only through the deepest character authenticity. Here it seems to escalate into melodrama in the final stages, leaving the powerful main themes strangely unresolved.

But does this matter in a play so evocative of the horrors of fascism, and so fearsomely resonant of our own current and terrible world? No. It’s powerful, beautifully conceived, superbly acted and a formidable warning.

Runs until April 18. Box office:  020 7922 2922, youngvic.org