Grim ‘Broken Glass’ Belongs on Stage, Not on Small Screen

It’s a shame that Arthur Miller’s “Broken Glass” arrives in Southern California not on a stage but in a television adaptation, to be broadcast Sunday on PBS’ “Masterpiece Theatre.”

Television appears to be the wrong medium for “Broken Glass.” The intense close-ups and lugubrious music emphasize everything that’s soap-operatic about this play--and there’s a lot of that.

Still, it’s always important, if not necessarily energizing, to take a look at the latest from America’s playwright laureate.

“Broken Glass” is set in 1938, as the world learns about the wave of anti-Semitic violence breaking out in Germany, including Kristallnacht--the night of broken glass--when Jewish shops, homes and synagogues were systematically trashed by Nazi thugs.

Across the ocean, in Brooklyn, Sylvia Gellburg (Margot Leicester) is terrified by the reports. Suddenly her legs buckle from under her. She’s paralyzed below the waist.

When her doctor (Mandy Patinkin) can’t explain her ailment, he begins peering into the relationship between Sylvia and her husband, Phillip (Henry Goodman)--the only Jewish executive at a mortgage bank.

The doctor soon discovers that the marriage has been ailing for 20 years. We learn that Sylvia resented her husband’s insistence that she become a housewife two decades ago. Their sex life is kaput.

The dashing doctor--who rides horses on Brighton Beach and sees clearly into Sylvia’s inner life though he has no psychiatric training--begins to look like the man Sylvia needs. Unfortunately, he’s married too--to his non-Jewish receptionist (Elizabeth McGovern).

Miller and director David Thacker wield a heavy hand. The doctor’s instant attraction to Sylvia and his wife’s instant suspicions feel spurious. The symbolic relationship between the marital woes and the overseas violence feels labored.

Goodman and Leicester, from the London cast, are eloquently pinched and agonized. Patinkin is surprisingly restrained, considering some of his lines. But the play is serious instead of profound, grim instead of galvanizing.

* “Broken Glass” airs Sunday at 9 p.m. on KCET-TV Channel 28, followed by an interview with Miller.