![]() It also functions as an allegory for the paranoid ravages of McCarthyism that Miller’s America was in the grip of. If you’ve somehow never come across it, ‘The Crucible’ is a historical drama about the real-life Salem Witch Trials, wherein a group of young girls accused dozens of their townsfolk of being witches, leading to a reign of terror – presided over by Danforth – in which 20 people were executed and many more arrested. He also feels more like the little guy, standing up against Matthew Marsh’s posh, lugubrious Deputy Governor Danforth, whose inability to admit his own mistakes leads to carnage. It’s a bold gamble that really pays off, and makes Proctor’s flaws – chiefly cheating on his wife Elizabeth (Eileen Walsh) with young Abigail Williams (Erin Doherty) – seem both more pathetic and more human. It reclaims the character from traditional thespy brooding-hero portrayals and brings him much more in line with other great Miller protagonists like Willy Loman or Eddie Carbone – a flawed working schlub, not a Byronic bad boy. A Noo Joisey Proctor feels a bit wild at first, but it comes to feel like a great decision. ![]() In any case, it would seem to back up the unexpected accents. I’m not sure I quite get the aesthetic: a sense of timelessness perhaps, that intentionally leaves it as neither a period drama nor explicitly modern dress. The pink-clad girls wear retro peasant smocks John Proctor wanders around in a buttoned work shirt with a red T-shirt underneath. I am the precise opposite of a fashion expert, but my best understanding is that they’re a semi-anachronistic higgledy-piggledy of Americana from the last several centuries nothing aggressively modern but not confined to a single obvious time period. Here, they’re American not even proto-American: Brendan Cowell‘s troubled hero John Proctor speaks with a distinct New Jersey twang. ‘The Crucible’ is traditionally performed with English accents, because it’s set in Massachusetts in 1692, and the characters are mostly English immigrants or their children. Once it gets underway, two things about Turner’s production leap out. In fact, it’s more complicated than that. The first impression is that Turner is intent on laying on a colossal, sturm-und-drang spectacle in the vein of the Old Vic’s monumental 2014 production, the last big London staging of Arthur Miller’s 1953 masterpiece. But the elemental cascade, Tim Lutkin’s exquisitely moody lighting and the acapella singing from the pink-clad chorus of girls is a spine-tingling combination. Once the curtain (of rain) goes up, it’s only sparingly used, with the rest of Es Devlin’s set a minimalist thrust pocked by tangles of chairs. It doesn’t get much more spectacular than the crashing wall of artificial rain that shrouds the Olivier’s stage before Lyndsay Turner’s revival of ‘The Crucible’ starts. ‘The Crucible’ transfers to the Gielgud Theatre in June 2023, with an all new cast headed up by Milly Alcock from ‘House of the Dragon’ as Abigail Williams and prolific Irish actor Brian Gleeson as John Proctor. This review is from the National Theatre in September 2022.
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