By Neil Durham

WORTH A LOOK?: ****1/2

WHEN?: Saturday 21 February, opens 3 March and runs through 18 April 2026 RUNTIME: 120 minutes without interval

This venue has a strong recent record of reviving Arthur Miller plays including A View From The Bridge and Death Of A Salesman and this lesser known work deserves to be considered in the same sentence as those.

• Read on for reasons including how there are no multi cameras or technological trickery needed when the cast is this strong and material so pertinent

Director Jordan Fein (Into The Woods, Bridge Theatre) helms this tale set in Brooklyn, New York in 1938 and steps back from the breathtaking sets that have blessed some of his most recent work giving us a bed strewn with newspapers and clocks showing times at different capital cities around the world above a long, thin pane of glass where the stage can be viewed from behind it.

Sylvia Gellburg brought to vivid if incapacitated life by Pearl Chanda (Three Sisters, Almeida) reads about the violent attacks against Jewish communities carried out an ocean away in Germany on Kristallnacht as most people look away.

Her husband, in an extraordinarily moving performance by Eli Gelb (Stereophonic, Harold Pinter Theatre), is a successful real estate executive constantly correcting those who incorrectly call him ‘Mr Goldberg’ and concerned about the health of his wife who hasn’t been able to walk for nine days.

He visits a doctor played enthusiastically by Alex Waldmann (Intimate Apparel, Donmar) assisted by his nurse and partner, a delightfully comic and cutting Nancy Carroll (Marjorie Prime, Menier) who says there is nothing physically wrong with Sylvia and resolves to get to the bottom of the mystery.

Broken Glass was written in 1994 towards the end of Miller’s life but speaks extraordinarily to the world we live in now where 24-hour news is filled with atrocities abroad with ramifications at home where it is easy to become swept up in devastation at injust world events the viewer feels powerless to change.

It’s also a meditation on what it is to be Jewish, a thorny topic at any time but especially so now, and without an actor as skilled as Gelb as Sylvia’s husband we don’t think this work would be so nuanced and powerful as it is here.

We’ve deliberately listed almost all of the cast in our review thus far (Juliet Cowan as Sylvia’s gossipy sister is excellent as much-needed comic relief) because Broken Glass needs to be carried with delicacy because of its incendiary subject matter.

Director Fein gives us a play which is far less showy than his previous musical work and by stripping back this work it’s revealed to be not quite as great as Miller’s many pinnacles (the recent All My Sons closing 7 March 2026 being an absolute highlight) but deserving of mention with those.

More importantly it feels especially crucial to watch in 2026 and this 120-minute production without interval ensures that the tension is ratcheted up to a life-altering event with the opportunity to look away, or for a loo break, denied.

No multi cameras or technological trickery needed when the cast is this strong and material so pertinent to now. This Broken Glass is smashing.

• Main pictures via Facebook courtesy Young Vic Theatre Tickets
• Have you seen an Arthur Miller show before and what did you think of it? Let us know what you thought in the comments below
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