Broken Glass

Description

"It's moral vision, as well as the Miller voice, which remains as strong and unrelenting as a prophet's, that distinguish Broken Glass." - The New York Times When Sylvia Gellburg, a young Jewish woman living in Brooklyn, becomes partially paralyzed from the waist down, her husband Phillip is shocked: what could've caused this sudden condition? The answer is Kristallnacht, the horrific, anti-Semitic event occurring halfway around the world. As the Gellburgs reckon with this pogrom and with the breakdown of their own marriage, a terrifying thought emerges: will the Jewish people ever be able to avoid persecution? Broken Glass is one of Miller's most moving and personal works, touching on themes of Jewish identity and anti-Semitism, winning him the Olivier Award for Best New Play in 1994. This Methuen Drama Student Edition is edited by Ambika Singh, and Nupur Tandon, with commentary and notes that explore the play's production history (including excerpts from an interview with director David Thacker,) as well as the dramatic, thematic and academic debates that surround it.

Ambika Singh (volume editor) is Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at the Institute of Management, Nirma University, Ahmedabad, India. Her research interests include American Theater, American Studies, Feminist Studies, Race Studies, Age Studies and Communication Studies. Nupur Tandon (volume editor) is Professor at Malaviya National Institute of Technology, Jaipur, India. Her research interests include fiction in English, modern English theare and feminist literature. Arthur Miller (1915-2005) was arguably the greatest American playwright of the twentieth century. Hist most famous work for the stage includes Death of a Salesman, The Crucible, All My Sons and A View from the Bridge. Six volumes of his plays and a volume of his theatre essays are published by Methuen Drama. Susan C. W. Abbotson (series editor) is Professor of Dramatic Literature at Rhode Island College, USA.

Part psychological detective story and part political drama ... [Broken Glass is] far and away the best of Miller's late plays ... [He] gives a riveting portrait of 1930s America in which antisemitism leads to a desperate desire for assimilation and in which consciousness of contemporary European horrors is regarded as debilitatingly eccentric. * Michael Billington, The Guardian *