Scholarly Reviews of the Crucible by Arthur Miller
Review: In Arthur Miller's 'Crucible,' First They Came for the Witches
- Arthur Miller's The Crucible
- NYT Critic's Pick
- Broadway, Drama , Play
- Endmost Date:
- Walter Kerr Theater, 219 West. 48th St.
- 877-250-2929
The Devil has returned to Broadway, with the ability to make the stiff tremble. It is time to be agape, very agape, of a play that seemed perhaps simply worthy when you studied it in loftier school English grade.
The director Ivo van Hove and a dazzling international cast — led past Ben Whishaw, Sophie Okonedo, Saoirse Ronan and Ciaran Hinds — have plumbed the raw terror in Arthur Miller'south "The Crucible," which opened on Thursday night at the Walter Kerr Theater. And an endlessly revived historical drama from 1953 suddenly feels similar the freshest, scariest play in town.
That its arrival also feels perfectly timed in this presidential election twelvemonth, when politicians traffic in fears of outsiders and otherness, is less surprising. Miller's portrait of murderous mass hysteria during the 17th-century Salem witch trials was written to echo the "Red menace" hearings in Washington in the 1950s.
Parallels between Miller's then and latter-day nows have never been hard to attain for. What makes Mr. van Hove's interpretation so unsettlingly vivid has piddling to practise with literal-minded topicality.
Instead, following a formula that has proved gilt for him in recent seasons, Mr. van Hove divests a historical work of menstruation associations, the improve to come across its inhabitants as timelessly tragic and as close to you and me as the people in the seats next to u.s. — or, if we're honest, as our fallible selves. And more than any of the many "Crucibles" I've seen, this one insists that we place with non only the victims of persecution but also with those who would estimate them.
Nosotros are made to see what the terrified residents of Salem call up they meet, in visions formed from a collective, paranoid fever dream. In rendering these effects, Mr. van Hove and his amazing set and lighting designer, Jan Versweyveld, borrow freely from the imagery of horror movies. And so in that location's Philip Glass's icy, rhythmic music, which seems to emanate not from the phase only from your own rushing pulse.
Image
There is no hint of shabby desperation in these effects, of the sense of a spook house broken-down over a well-worn drama. As in his recent masterly reimagining of another Miller classic, "A View From the Bridge," Mr. van Hove is aiming for a scalding transparency. It is the kind of openness that lets us see the divided soul beneath the skin and, in "The Crucible," what one character describes as "the wheels within wheels of this village, and fires within fires."
The impact of that "View," which presented a Brooklyn longshoreman's doomed family inside the starkness of an ancient Greek amphitheater, was such that I feared that this "Crucible" would endure by comparison. Then there was the matter of this production's chic global casting.
The changeling beauty of Ms. Ronan, fresh from her University Award nomination for "Brooklyn," made sense for the diabolical teenager Abigail. (And, aye, she's absolutely smashing in the part.) Simply that willowy, sensitive plant Ben Whishaw every bit the strapping, rough-hewed farmer John Proctor? Really?
But Mr. van Hove knew exactly what he was doing here. All the members of his large ensemble observe revealing new shapes within archetypes and insist that we grasp and fifty-fifty sympathize with their characters' perspectives.
There are other forms of magic afoot, equally Mr. Versweyveld's unmarried set seamlessly becomes everything the script says it must be. Equally first seen, occupied by direct-backed, chanting girls at their desks in a fleeting, imagistic prologue, this would appear to be a contemporary schoolroom of a dreary institutional nature.
Yous could imagine it doing duty for civic events, such as a town hall forum or a local election. Those who assemble here friction match the walls in their drab, functional clothing (designed past Wojciech Dziedzic). A chalkboard — over which is scrawled a prayer encouraging skilful will to men — occupies upstage center. And without giving besides much away, permit me urge yous to watch that space. (The uncanny video projections are by Tal Yarden.)
The play's unwitting catalyst is Mr. Whishaw's John, whose sexual encounter with a young servant, Abigail, has left her determined to merits him for herself. She gathers a grouping of other girls in the forest to invoke the powers of darkness against John'south married woman, Elizabeth (Ms. Okonedo). These would-be witches for a dark are spotted by Abigail's uncle, the Rev. Samuel Parris (a marvelously soggy-spined Jason Butler Harner), setting off a concatenation of accusations that results in scores of deaths.
Image
John Proctor has often been portrayed (past the likes of Liam Neeson and Daniel Day-Lewis) as a stalwart Gary Cooper type, and part of the tragedy in that context is seeing a big man brought to his knees. The slighter-framed Mr. Whishaw looks more vulnerable, and we fear for his safety from the first, not least because his cardinal virtue appears to be his sanity, and the sane rarely flourish in a world gone mad.
Ms. Okonedo, who brings a welcome earthiness to the role of Elizabeth, exudes a like spirit of mutual-sense humanity. But living far from the town on their subcontract, they are unaware of the madness that is taking over Salem. When an officer of the court comes to arrest Elizabeth, they have the incredulity of people caught unawares past a tide of history that they merely can't believe could happen in the world they know. Nazi Germany comes to mind. Certain pundits might even think of the U.s. today.
Feasible sexual chemistry onstage is fairly mutual; the bonds of a quieter, deeper-reaching love, less so. Information technology's that connectedness that Mr. Whishaw and Ms. Okonedo so beautifully embody hither, and it ennobles their characters as much every bit their moral stances. When we see them in their last meeting, cleaved by incarceration and fearful of pain each other by embracing, the heart shatters.
One of the miracles of this "Crucible," though, is its success in presenting all those onstage equally all too man and all also hungry to see themselves as good people. It's their self-protecting, self-deluding rationalizations that conjure the devils of distrust that rip a social cloth to shreds.
If I had infinite, I would unmarried out every one in the cast. Only allow me to mention the scheming, petty burghers of Thomas Jay Ryan and Tina Benko; the anxious, spiritually challenged man of the cloth portrayed by Nib Camp; Tavi Gevinson'southward malleable, craven and poignantly apparent serving girl; Jim Norton'south folksy and unexpectedly heroic farmer; and the suave, snarling hanging judge given such unassailably authoritative life by Mr. Hinds.
In the end, everybody loses, and everybody suffers, with one blazing exception. That'south Abigail, the girl who cries "witch" and who, as Ms. Ronan and so beguilingly plays her, has the power to go alternately invisible and radiant with focused intent.
"The Crucible" has a diverse and spectacular array of moments that brand the flesh creep. But in that location's nothing quite as scary every bit the sight of Ms. Ronan's Abigail, seated stock nevertheless in a chair, bending a vulnerable girl to her volition with the force of a malevolent stare.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/01/theater/review-in-arthur-millers-crucible-first-they-came-for-the-witches.html
0 Response to "Scholarly Reviews of the Crucible by Arthur Miller"
Post a Comment