Terri Dunbar-Curran
IT’S the end of November 1938 and a series of attacks against Jews has taken place throughout Nazi Germany. A Jewish community in Brooklyn, New York, is reeling after hearing the news about Kristallnacht, or The Night of Broken Glass.
Arthur Miller’s 1994 play, titled Broken Glass, which examines the reaction of a handful people to those terrifying events, ends its run at The Fugard Theatre on Saturday. Sir Antony Sher takes the role of Phillip Gellburg, whose wife Sylvia is so distraught after reading about the events she becomes partially paralysed.
“It’s a very clever way of looking at the Holocaust. You see it in a fresh way,” he says. “People all reacted differently. Sylvia is severely traumatised. My character has a very complicated reaction to his own identity. You could even call him a self-hating Jew. He’s a fascinating character to play, with lots of layers.”
Sher says that anti-Semitism was a huge factor at that time in America, and that staging the play here is also interesting, because one of the issues it deals with is racism.
At the end of last year, Sher performed in a production of Broken Glass at the Tricycle Theatre in London and reprises his role for the Fugard Theatre run.
“It’s completely different,” he says. “Director Janice Honeyman never saw the production in London. She has very much created a production simply in response to the play. My performance has had to adapt, which has been terrifically stimulating.
“When you play a part for a long time, one of the difficulties is having to repeat the same thing again and again. I had to re-examine everything with a new group of people. But because the character is so fascinating to me, he withstands investigation. You can dig and mine for a long time.”
Sher says that there are some theatrical parts that require a lot of research, which he has written extensively about.
“Then there are parts you really have to find inside yourself – and Phillip is one of those. I’ve had to dig into my own self and my own past. Finding those times I was uncomfortable as myself.”
He remembers the trouble he had when he first decided to come out as a gay man, and the guilt which accompanied being a white South African man when he first moved to London. He also had to face the fact that Jewish actors weren’t having much success at the time either. Those things were among his major concerns.
“All of which was a ridiculous waste of time, you can’t not be who you are,” he says. “I went through that phase and ended up in so many closets I didn’t know which key was which. I’m out of them now, and I celebrate who I am, but Phillip isn’t and doesn’t.”
Besides identity, another important theme of the play is how we react when atrocities happen, even if they’re not directed at our own people.
“What is your response? One of the most intelligent characters in this play is the doctor. He studied in Germany and has much admiration for the people. So he refuses to believe that this won’t all blow over. And Kristallnacht was just a small beginning to the massive atrocities,” says Sher. “That’s very human. It’s very possible to underestimate bad things when they start to happen. So what is an appropriate response?
This isn’t the first time Sher and director Honeyman have worked together. “In fact, we’ve known one another since childhood in Sea Point,” laughs Sher. “Janice has memories of us playing on the beach together. And in my adolescence I was trying to make a film. I wrote, directed and was in it – I was a mini Orson Wells – Janice was playing the female part.”
A few years later, Sher left for England, but had the opportunity to work with Honeyman when he was with the Royal Shakespeare Company and she was directing Hello and Goodbye. “That was excellent to be working together professionally for the first time.
“Then working together on The Tempest was just a terrific experience. It was a real cross-cultural experience with the Royal Shakespeare Company bringing their Shakespeare skills and the South African company bringing their experience of African magic, ritual and music. It was just invaluable for that play.”
Sher says that he is really enjoying the fact that part of his career is here in South Africa now.
“I so wanted to get away when I was 19, but there’s something so wonderful about it all coming full circle. There’s something about playing your home town that’s unique and very special.
“Being here, close to all of my family, is immensely enjoyable and heart-warming. I’m not good away from home and I can’t think of any other city I could spend two months in.”
Once this week’s Fugard run is over and Sher returns to London, there is a possibility of the London production moving to the West End with whichever cast members are available.
Besides that, being both a writer and an actor he also has projects in both fields to attend to.
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