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Arthur Miller’s

This is the most recent play by one of the greatest living playwrights. Arthur Miller is famed for standing up against the witch hunts of the McCarthy era. In 1953, The Crucible was produced - a brilliant play about prejudice and persecution. In 1955 he was brought before The House Committee to testify about his un-American activities.
He made front page news when he married Marilyn Monroe. This marriage lasted only five years in which he wrote the screenplay for the film The Misfits (1960) which starred Monroe. Death of a Salesman was filmed for TV in 1984, but has since become a classic stage play. Broken Glass (first performance in Connecticut 1994) is his latest work for the theatre and for that reason alone is worth seeing. Another good reason for seeing it is that it the most recent production by Gwenda Hughes at the New Victoria Theatre. The arrival of Gwenda Hughes has marked a new era in the development of this wonderful local cultural resource and her production of Broken Glass continues the high standard of theatre we have come to expect.
However, a play about the Holocaust when you are already feeling depressed by the images of Kosova on your TV screen wasn’t exactly appeaing. it required a fair bit of effort to get myself to the New Vic box office. And so, driven by a sense of duty, I trod the well worn path from Hartshill to Stoneyfields and bought a second row balcony seat. From my vantage point I was able to get the full impact of the stark symbolic setting of private and professional interiors of 1938 Brooklyn. The entire stage was ripped apart and beneath the jagged edges a cold blue light illuminated a space filled with broken crystal. The journey was well worth the effort after all, just to see the set!
The cast gave inspired performances of roles which made enormous demands on each one of them - both technically (heart attacks) and emotionally (the stress of caged sexual desires & thwarted careers) This play is vintage Miller and this production must rank as one of the most authentic and sincere you are likely to encounter this side of the Atlantic. Good direction is not about creating a style which is recognisably the work of an individual director, but rather the achieving of the far more difficult goal of allowing the play and its author to speak for themselves. Gwenda Hughes production did just that. Meticulous attention to detail brought clarity to a complex plot. It seemed, also, that the company had been encouraged to arrive at an in-depth understanding of the Arthur Millier’s intentions. Without doubt, the actors gave intelligble presentations of the protaganatists of the play. They gave life to the relationships amonst the characters, and helped us to be aware of the inner forces which annimated or paralysed them.
This is undoubtedly a thought provoking play with heavy undertones. Dealing with the intensity of broken human relationships the play was also about the horrors being perpetrated by the Nazi’s against the Jews - “Kristalnacht” when the shop windows were smashed by faschist mobs - the night of broken glass. As I left the theatre, I couldn’t help thinking that although I had been confronted with the impending holocaust of the Jews forced to identify themselves with the Star of David, alongside them there must have been men and women wearing pink triangles, each with their lives driven and affected in a similar way to the characters in BROKEN GLASS. I’m glad I overcame my intial inertia about going to see the play, because I now felt that this had been an evening well spent.

Verdi’s AIDA, performed by the Wroclaw State Opera, at the Victoria Hall Hanley in April, was a musical event of some magnitude. The chorus and orchestra of the Wroclaw State Opera provided a firm professional support for a fine cast of superb voices. Aida, the captive daughter of Amonasro the King of Ethiopia provides one of the most challenging roles for any soprano. This challenge was ably met by the enormous voice and technical facility of the soloist in this performance. Each of the principals could be praised for the individual quality their voices as well as their musical accounts of the characters they portrayed. Space and time reduces this appreciation to a communal accolade: they were fantastic.
Although orchestra and chorus were fewer in numbers than one would expect in a permanent opera house, the Wroclaw State Opera chorus and orchestra managed to achieve a rich and fully convincing sound which did justice to Verdi’s wonderful score. There can be no doubt that the excellent acoustic for which the Victoria Hall is famed, played a part in securing a balance and clarity of singers and instrumentalists.
Ewa Michnik, the company’s musical director, proved her outstanding ability as an opera conductor with an authority which produced an overall control of the performance without becoming too rigid.
Despite the use of costumes, scenery and stage lighting, the limited space prevented the opera from being much more than a concert performance. None the less, this was a most enjoyable representation of Aida witnessed by the tumultuous applause from a capacity audience.

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