Playwright: Arthur Miller
At: The Actors Workshop Theatre,
1044 W. Bryn Mawr, Chicago
Phone: 773-728-7529; $15
Through: Oct. 24
Timing with the Goodman Theatre's world premiere of Arthur Miller's Finishing the Picture, the Actors Workshop Theatre has kicked off its all-Miller season with Broken Glass. Call it smart programming or ambitious gall.
Whether or not Actors Workshop will ride the coattails of a Goodman/Miller success remains to be seen. What makes Actors Workshop commendable is that its season focuses largely on lesser-known Miller. Sure we all know about Death of a Salesman and The Crucible, but what about The Last Yankee or The American Clock?
Adventurous theatergoers will want to seek out Broken Glass, which dates to 1994 when it won London's Olivier Award for Best Play. On Broadway, it lost the Tony prize to the second part of Angels in America. Critics were mostly divided over its plot of a 1939 Brooklyn Jewish woman who mysteriously loses her ability to walk when she learns more and more about Nazi atrocities in Germany.
Actors Workshop has picked up the pieces of Broken Glass before in its 2001 production at Victory Gardens Theatre and now again in the company's cozy Edgewater storefront space. Under director Michael Colucci's guidance, Broken Glass has been reassembled in a mostly involving and lucid production, though it suffers from a few unpolished shards.
One of the sharpest performances comes from Neal Grofman as Phillip Gellburg, the man whose wife is inexplicably paralyzed. Uneasily gulping and twisting his neck, Grofman's tightly wound performance fully embodies the troubled Mr. Gellburg from his blatant self-loathing to gnawing unspoken longing that strains his marriage. Grofman also deploys a nasally pinched voice and sharp furrowed brows that aim piercing accusatory glares at all who try to cross his conflicted character.
Largely locked in his line of fire is Equity actor Thomas Edson McElroy's Dr. Harry Hyman, a lothario-like doctor who becomes obsessed with finding the root of the Gellburg's dysfunction. McElroy might not be everyone's idea of a former ladies man, but his tall presence and calm demeanor aptly suits his quizzical character.
The weak link in Broken Glass' mosaic Jacqueline Grandt's low-key approach to the ill Sylvia Gellburg. Yes, she does shout and rail against Nazi thugs she sees in the newspapers, but Grandt comes off more as an irritated hospital patient pulled away from her reading than a woman whose fears and resentments have left her physically and emotionally damaged. Against Grofman and McElroy's strong performances, Grandt simply doesn't hold her own.
The rest of the cast delivers good supporting character work (especially Jan Ellen Graves with her grating laugh and Debra Rodkin's hesitant Brooklyn gossip), though there was a tentativeness to their performances at the opening that didn't fully lock their characters into place (chalk it up to opening jitters).
The reputation of Broken Glass suffers no doubt when compared to Miller's earlier masterpieces. Yet that doesn't mean the play should be completely written off for it has many vital things to say about self-identity and life-damaging resentments.