Palace Theatre, Watford – until 24 March 2018. Reviewed by Sharon Hines Kennedy
5*****
The set and stage design for this production was simple but very clever. The stage rotated between scenes it was built to look like a glass block which contained a solo cellist (more about that later).
This play, one of Arthur Miller’s later plays was written in 1994. It is well known having been made into a film in 1996 and a BBC television production in 1997. Miller wrote this play as a reaction to the nationalism, war and sub-sequent genocide that took place in the former Yugoslavia. The genocide taking place in Rwanda was not lost on him either.
The play itself is set in New York in 1938 just as America and Europe look like they may be drawn into a Second World War. The characters are drawn from a Jewish community. The main character Sylvia (Amy Marston) has become paralysed in her legs. Her doctor (Michael Higgs) believes this has been caused by psychological problems rather than physical as he can find nothing medically wrong with her.
Sylvia is an intelligent woman. She is also the only one who appears to be concerned about what Hitler and his Nazis are doing to Jewish people in Ger-many. She reads the newspapers and listens to radio reports avidly. The rest of her community including her husband Philip (Michael Matus) do not see what’s happening as their problem. The Jews of Germany far from New York and are not personally known to them. They are unwilling to acknowledge the antisemitism around them in New York.
As mentioned earlier, each scene change was accompanied by the soloist on the cello, the music was key to setting the mood in the next scene.
This was a wonderful interpretation of this important play that is relevant to-day as when it was written in 1994 and the World events taking place at that time. And as it was in the time period that Miller wrote and set the play originally.