David Thacker and Arthur Miller
While researching a new history of the National Theatre, to be published in 2010, Daniel Rosenthal interviewed director David Thacker to discuss his long working relationship with playwright Arthur Miller.
Daniel introduces an extract of his recording of the interview where Thacker discusses his work with Miller on the National's production of Broken Glass in 1994.
The production featured Henry Goodman and Margot Leicester. In 1995 Broken Glass won the Olivier Award for Best New Play. The play’s title refers to the events of November 9-10 1938 in Nazi Germany which saw the destruction of Jewish property and synagogues and the deportation of over 25 000 Jews to concentration camps. The play takes place in New York City around the same time as Kristallnacht in Nazi Germany.
The plot centres around a married couple, Phillip and Sylvia Gellburg. When Sylvia reads about the events of the Night of Broken Glass in the newspaper she becomes paralysed from the waist down. Her psychosomatic condition is treated by Dr. Hyman. During the treatment we learn of Sylvia’s personal problems, particularly those surrounding her marriage to Phillip.
INTRODUCTION TRANSCRIPT
‘You join me here in the research room of the National Theatre’s Archive. While working on a new history of the National, I recently recorded an interview with the director David Thacker, about his long relationship with Arthur Miller and, in particular, their collaboration on the National’s production of Miller's play, Broken Glass, in 1994.
In 1992, impressed by Thacker’s staging of Miller's The Last Yankee at The Young Vic, the playwright had sent him a draft of his new script, entitled Gellburg, the story of a Jewish couple, Philip and Sylvia Gellburg, living in New York in 1938, against a background of violent anti-semitism in Nazi Germany.
Originally, Thacker was to direct the world premiere of this play at the National; however, a decision was made to produce it first on Broadway with another director, and Thacker was pencilled in for the British premiere.
Between 1992 and 1994, Miller and Thacker kept in close contact. Their correspondence and annotated scripts – which Thacker has most generously deposited with the National’s Archive – chart the revisions to the text.
Thacker was in the unique position of watching the world premiere of the play in New York while rehearsing his British cast at the National, all the while working with Miller on the script. So let’s listen to some extracts from the interview, in which Thacker explains the title change, from Gellburg to Broken Glass, the addition of a new scene and how the ending was rewritten after the Broadway production.’
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT
