SOURCE: Review of The Broken Heart, in Evening Standard, 6 June 1995. Reprinted in Theatre Record, Vol. XV, No. 12, 10 July 1995, p. 736.

In the review below, De Jongh applauds Michael Boyd's 1995 staging of The Broken Heart at London's Barbican Theatre as "a spectacular but truthful performance, brimming with sardonic humour and emotional dynamism. "

Three hundred and sixty-two years after its London premiere, John Ford's revenge drama of arranged marriages and refined cruelty, with women at the mercy of male power, still speaks with rare immediacy.

And Michael Boyd's enthralling Royal Shakespeare Company production, greatly admired at Stratford last autumn, reaches London further improved. The memorable acting of Iain Glen and Emma Fielding as the lovers doomed never to have their fill of each other, or indeed to have each other at all, ought to wring even metal-plated hearts. The excitement of Boyd's production depends upon the way it represses and controls...