My Melodrama
Broken Glass – The Young VicIt is cheesy, and it may even be a cliché, to open my very first review with the story of the play that really made the world on stage click for me. It is, however,...
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Broken Glass
Nobody is calling Arthur Miller’s 1994 play Broken Glass as great a masterpiece as some of his other works (Death of a Salesman, A View from the Bridge), in fact quite a few of you may never have heard of it. But its exploration of what it means to be Jewish in a hostile world feel painfully relevant today.
The Story: Set in 1938 Brooklyn, we follow Sylvia Gellburg, who—after obsessively consuming news of the Nazi Kristallnacht assaults in Berlin—literally loses the use of her legs. It’s a chilling look at a woman paralyzed by a horror that’s an ocean away, yet feels right at her doorstep. The show suggests that the characters’ numbness to the news is a mirror for our own, including headlines like “Gaza or Gaga?”.
What our culture curators are saying
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Krapp’s Last Tape / Godot’s To Do List
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“Is existentialism having a moment? It certainly felt like it at the Royal Court for this thought-provoking double bill. Godot's To-Do List sent a chill through the audience as we recognized the inner voice—or perhaps even more frighteningly, an outer AI or social media one—endlessly controlling our lives but stopping us from doing what we really want to do. Both curtain raisers were two sides of the same coin, and this wonderful piece of contemporary writing was paired with Samuel Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape. Directed and performed by Gary Oldman, this was the spectacle the pumped audience was here to devour. Enter Gary Oldman on the second night of his first live stage performance in London for 35 years. Firstly, he mastered his audience with significant aplomb, although he actually used a banana! Once he had us, he carefully led us through the process of Krapp's last tapes, meeting his younger self in the form of a voice recording which was laid down as a birthday ritual. Beckett's magnificent script and a very clever use of lighting did the rest, and the audience were spellbound throughout. Of course, Beckett is a matter of taste; it’s grown up, like a martini. My own preference is surgically cold and very dry, without even the tiniest (and perhaps irresistible) twist of sentimentality.”
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