Damaged Glass

A PW Productions Ltd and Tricycle London Productions presentation of the play in 2 functions by Arthur Burns. Directed by Iqbal Khan.Phillip Gellburg - Antony Sher Sylvia Gellburg - Tara Fitzgerald Dr Harry Hyman - Stanley Townsend Margaret Hyman - Caroline Loncq Harriet - Suzan Sylvester Stanton Situation - John Protheroe Arthur Burns notoriously authored an excellent play about American-Jewish assimilation. Regrettably, where that play, "Dying of the Salesperson," treated its subject obliquely with fascinating ambiguity, his 1994 go back to the subject "Damaged Glass" is thuddingly literal. That's certainly the sense shipped by Iqbal Khan's dismayingly heavy-handed West Finish production. A married Jewish couple in Brooklyn in 1938 have hit an emergency. Philip Gellburg (Antony Sher) would go to see his old friend Dr. Hyman (nicely swaggering Stanley Townsend) because he's frightened. His wife Sylvia (Tara Fitzgerald) has all of a sudden found herself paralysed both metaphorically and literally through the disasters she has been reading through about in Nazi-controlled Germany following Kristallnacht -- hence the play's title. Hyman, by their own admission, isn't any psychoanalyst, but his friendship and convenient medical training allow Burns to solve crucial, covered-up difficulties inside the marriage. Both Philip and Sylvia undergo bewilderment and denial about themselves, their relationship as well as their link with their Judaism before wholly foreseeable (melo)dramatic climax where they achieve sudden complete insight. Absorbing because these ideas ought to be, the written text reads much better than it plays, specifically in so serious a staging. Even though production received strong reviews in the initial 2010 outing in the Tricycle theater, its almost wholly recast West Finish transfer has been doing it couple of if any favours. The only holdover in the first outing is Sher within the central role of Philip. Possibly so that they can fill a bigger West Finish house, Sher quivers with anguish in the start with Philip's blind self-absorption already at virtual breaking-point. Thus the greater his fear and self-loathing develops, greater it might be to look at. This level of overt display fatally works against audience connection. Philip informs Hyman that he's unable to express themself rapidly, a line Sher takes very literally. His shateringly slow delivery also highlights his have a problem with the accent, an issue bizarrely shared through the entire company. The result is much like hearing a lot of industrious performers whose intonation keeps sliding off-key. One of the new cast, Fitzgerald costs best as Sylvia, most famously because she underplays her character's trauma. But even her jobs are sandbagged by Khan's overemphatic direction and leaden pacing of both moments and, most importantly, the transitions, which following Miller's directives are supported by cello. Grant Olding's alternately anxious and elegiac music is well-performed but every signal makes its point two times, further slowly destroying the already distended evening of momentum.Sets and costumes, Mike Britton lighting Matthew Eagland seem, Erectile dysfunction Borgnis music, Grant Olding production stage manager, Lizzie Chapman. Opened up, Sept. 14, 2011, examined Sept. 22. Running time: 2 Hrs, 25 MIN. Contact David Benedict at benedictdavid@mac.com