Broken Glass at Pico Playhouse

The setting is Brooklyn in the autumn of 1938. Sylvia Gellburg has been obsessively following news accounts of events in Nazi Germany. When she sees s newspaper photo of old Jewish men forced by Nazis to scrub a sidewalk with toothbrushes, she becomes mysteriously paralyzed. Her husband, Philip Gellburg (that's Gellburg, not Goldberg, he repeatedly reminds) is the lone Jewish executive at a very Establishment banking firm. At first he is valued, but is later viewed with suspicion. He is never an equal. Philip loves his wife and is deeply concerned for her, but theirs has long been a sexless marriage. The only one who gives the paralyzed Sylvia hope is her married physician, Dr. Hyman, who reminds Sylvia of her own sensuality. Miller pulls off the feat of crafting a play dealing with specifically Jewish characters and substantive themes but that will nonetheless resonate with anyone from any group who wanted a sense of belonging both to their own immediate community and the larger community that is America.