By Arthur Miller
Directed by Lyndsey Turner
Set Designer Es Devlin
Composer / Arranger Caroline Shaw
Olivier Theatre, National Theatre
Saturday 15th October 2022, 14.00
CAST
David Ahmed – Hopkins
Fisayo Akinade – Reverend Hale
Zoe Aldrich – Ann Putnam
Nathan Amzi- Ezekiel Cheever
Stephanie Beattie – Martha Corey
Halle Brown – Ensemble
Sophie Brown – Tituba
Raphael Bushay – Marshall Herrick
Anushka Chakravarti- Mercy Lewis
Grace Cooper Milton – Ensemble
Brendan Cowell- John Proctor
Rachelle Diedericks – Mary Warren
Erin Doherty – Abigail Williams
Hero Douglas – Ensemble
Henry Everett – Judge Hathorne
Nick Fletcher – Reverend Parris
Aoife Haakenson – Ensemble
Colin Haigh – Francis Nurse
Karl Johnson – Giles Corey
Martin Johnston – Ensemble
Matthew Marsh – Deputy Governor Danforth
Gracie McGonigal- Susanna Walcott
Alistair Parker- Thomas Putnam
Betty Paris
Joy Tan – Ensemble
Ami Tredrea- Ensemble
Tilly Tremayne – Rebecca Nurse
Eileen Walsh – Elisabeth Proctor
The Crucible dates back to 1953, and the parallels with the Senator McCarthy Hollywood “Communist” Trials are clear. It doesn’t date, because we have our own non-PC witch trials of academics by students and media today. Far worse, Russians who criticize the war in Ukraine are facing persecution, as are Iranian women who object to headscarves in a theocracy. Late 17th century Salem was a theocracy. Arthur Miller has said that he started out with the aim of highlighting the Hollywood trials as a witch-hunt, but that as he researched the original Salem witches story, and he did so in Salem itself, it took over.
Michael Billington points out how the play adapts to changing times. On its early production, the Hollywood trials screamed out, and with it the forced confession. If you confessed to consorting with the devil, you did not hang.. Then he says that in a 2006 version, it seemed about intellectual rigidity. Once you’ve picked your side, you stick with it. Governor Danforth needs the exact piece of paper to nail on the church door. Simply everyone knowing that Proctor has been forced to confess is not enough. Then in the 2014 production, in the wake of TV personalities and Catholic clerics being caught out, he notes that the action was triggered by an older man abusing a younger girl … and that was Miller’s addition.
A play once described as a ‘rip-roaring melodrama’ now seems to have the multi-dimensionaity of great art.
Michael Billington, The 101 Greatest Plays From Antiquity To The Present
In 2022, it’s trial by mass hysteria that springs back out. All the versions feature underlying jealousy as a reason for accusation.
I’ve just finished reading Robert Harris’s Act of Oblivion which is set in theocratic New England in the 1660s and 1670s, and we’ve just watched Outlander Series 6, set a hundred years later, but still focussed on that Puritan witchcraft mind set. Claire Fraser gets accused of witchcraft at least once in every series.
In the 60s and 70s schools were fond of the three big religious plays Murder In The Cathedral, A Man For All Seasons and The Crucible, and to me The Crucible is the best and the only one worthy of revival. We have seen productions of other plays that I’ve rated more highly this year, but as an intrinsic play (Shakespeare excepted) The Crucible stands out above all this year’s competition. That’s why different productions attract five star reviews.
Didn’t It rain
The stage is surrounded on three sides with rain as you come in. Rain punctuates the acts. There are elaborate drains at the sides, and the front row are issued with plastic macs. I’d be more worried about three hours on a wet seat. When the play starts, some of the girls have to get down on their knees trying to dry the acting area with cloth.
There really is a lot of it. Our first thought was, ‘Hang on, this might make sense if it were set in Ireland, but it’s not.’
It started us both on an old, old rant. The amount of money The National Theatre lavishes on productions. It came to the fore with the great mass of extravagantly costumed knights a few years back in King Lear, but it really seems to be ‘money no object.’ The rain is an effect when you come in, right at the start and between acts. Otherwise it has no function. How much did it cost to build and pump, and pump away? It might not have been that excessive overall, as the rest of the set is just plain old tables and chairs with no back set at all. However its only purpose was pre-show, initial impact. There is no dramatic reference to it. I’m not going for Grotowski’s Toward A Poor Theatre, and we loved the elaborate set next door in the Lyttelton Theatre for Blues For An Alabama Sky. But we’ve watched producing theatres like Southampton’s Nuffield fail, or like Salisbury Playhouse, cut back on original productions. I feel that Arts Council money could be shared around more fairly, and for starters, London should be capped at the proportion of the funds equivalent to its population. Of course, opera deserves the biggest cut … no, slash … in its budgets. Every opera seat is heavily subsidised beyond any theatre.
Era and costume
The Salem witch trials were real and happened in 1692, rather later than the European witch frenzy.
It’s not set or costumed as 1692. The two priests, Parrish and Hale, are in black, so are the judges. Most of the cast are in various shades of dusty blue. The girls are in pink, except for Abigail who gets some green. They are ‘no particular era’ and the judges’ costume is a Handmaid’s Tale touch in that they are just invented and shiny. If anything, the era the costumes invoke is early 20th century … I thought later than What Katy Did (1872) but around Pollyanna (1913). What came first, the rain idea or the costumes? Certainly floor length skirts would have been a liability with such a wet stage. They needed lifting above the ankles. The men’s costumes involved jeans for John Proctor and crumpled linen jackets for the farmers.
Incidentally, the Handmaid’s Tale style poster for the play has absolutely no connection to it.
Accents
The Crucible has the usual advantage for British casts in pre-dating a definite American accent, though some linguists believe there was a perceptible distinction after a generation. Others believe differences emerged mid-18th century.
Given that immigration was constantly increasing, a majority would have retained their family British regional accent back in 1692. There is a strong argument that the differences between British English and American accents are because Shakespeare era pronunciation was frozen in America, while it was British English which changed. Supporters will show you several Shakespeare rhymes that work with American pronunciation, but not with British English.
Among the number of five star reviews, Arifa Akbar’s three stars in the Guardian stands out, with several points we agreed with. I keep quoting her because The Guardian still lacks a pay wall, so I can actually read her reviews. She says:
Still it kicks off with wobbles and appears like a play being performed by numbers at the start. Some Bostonian accents are distinctly off kilter and lines are spun lightly so that they cause ripples of laughter in the audience which defuses the sense of threat.
The Guardian 29 September 2022
I had noted the generic American accents too. They’re not ‘Bostonian’ or ‘New England’ at all though, but then why should they be? The 2014 version went for Yorkshire-lite throughout. You could go for any English accent … look at town names in Massachusetts: Boston, Cambridge, New Bedford, Northampton., Gloucester, Worcester, Barnstaple, Plymouth, Marlborough, Stockbridge, Andover, Taunton.
In the end, the costume choice dictates using American accents.This is NOT 1692.
Sound
The chanting of the girls and women far back on the stage was effective. However, sound designers seem to wish to be omnipresent so we get long droning note background noises running below dialogue. It has no purpose when over-used, which it was here.
Performance
As such a classic and well-known play, a synopsis is inappropriate. It was an attack of mass hysteria when young girls accused large numbers of locals of being engaged in witchcraft of various forms. Nineteen were hanged … plus two dogs. The dogs failed to sign their confessions. John Proctor, whose wife was accused, is the central character, sticking to his belief that it is indeed hysteria.
The opening scene showing the Reverend Parris preaching with the whole town as his congregation with their backs to us, has an added piece of drama. The young girl, Abigail Williams, giggles in church and Parris smacks her round the head, knocking her to the ground. That sets the action.
Overdone? Not at all. We had a fanatically Christian maths teacher who was our class teacher when I was thirteen. When he he had class assembly, he knocked the boy in front of me to the ground for ‘not praying loudly enough.’ Parris even looked like him.
Abigail Williams is the lead accuser among the girls, played by Erin Doherty (she was Princess Anne in The Crown). Arthur Miller took the real Abigail (who was aged 11) and made her 17, so that she could have an affair with the farmer, John Proctor (without him being a paedophile, anyway) for the plot. Abigail had worked for John and Elizabeth Proctor and had lost her job when Elizabeth Proctor had suspected an affair. She seeks revenge. It’s a strong role, and Doherty radiates her tension, arms stiff, legs in an angled position. She is also the actor reviewers pick out as the ‘lead.’
Nick Fletcher was the Reverend Parris, with a range of background facial expressions radiating his outraged nastiness. In real life, the original Parris was even worse than Arthur Miller made him … he had been in Barbados, and Tituba (accused by the girls) was his slave, not his servant. Still Miller made him foul enough and Nick Fletcher captures that. Tituba (Sophie Brown) was the only black character in the original play and that’s a significant reason why the girls picked her out as exotic. As so often, balancing the cast ethnicity can potentially undermine some points, which may be a reason for setting it later. In 1692, you couldn’t have had a black Reverend Hale, but a 20th century black hellfire preacher works.
The Reverend Hale (Fisayo Akinade )has come from the neighbouring town of Andover. The play starts with Reverend Parris’s niece apparently comatose after being led into naked dancing in the woods by Abigail. Hale starts out as a bible-basher extremist, but is the character who comes to realize that Proctor is innocent and it’s all about mass hysteria. Akinade achieves that change.
Brendan Cowell plays John Proctor, one of the great roles which actors aspire to do. He is suitably sturdy, the costume, sideburns and quiff setting him up as a tough Springsteen-esque blue collar stalwart. In the final act, when he is due to hang, he has a beard after months of incarceration. He plays it intensely almost Brando style. I’m still not sure that the costume enhances it. The scene I remember is when Reverend Hale has him prove his piety by recalling the Ten Commandments. The one he can’t remember when he is put on the spot is Thou shalt not commit adultery.
Eileen Walsh is Elisabeth Proctor, thin, she has been sick after childbirth (which is when John strayed.) The text says she is plain. The major plot hinge is when she has to declare whether John was a’lecher’ (adulterer) or not.
Childbirth, still birth, death in childbirth is a constant theme. In 1692, Giles Corey was on his third wife. This happened because of the high rate of mortality. Anne Putnam (Zoe Aldrich) has lost seven children, and lays the blame on Rebecca Nurse (Tilly Tremayne), who has healthy children, and who had been a midwife.
Mary Warren (Rachelle Diedericks) is the Proctors’ servant, who admits the girls were pretending, and is then singled out. She creates the bullied, put upon character just as I’d imagine her. She is confronted because of the time she’s spent skiving off watching the witchcraft trials, and John Proctor also bullies her. They all do.
Special mention for Karl Johnson as Giles Corey, the elderly farmer who inadvertently lands his wife in for the witch trials by saying she reads a lot of books. That was one of Miller’s particular Hollywood trials digs, as well as a rare bit of humour.
Matthew Marsh plays the presiding judge, Deputy Governor Danforth. Actually we’d both felt the production was beginning to sag a little before he comes on, but his power of personality in the role brought it back to life. Henry Everett adds as the totally rigid and blinkered Judge Hathorne.
The scene everyone remembers is when Mary Warren has told the judge they are faking and the girls all go off into hysteria. I’ve seen the play several times, and the girls chorus is a part that everyone involved gives their all as if it’s audition day at RADA.
OVERALL
It is a truly great play, and like other great plays, it’s all there in the text. It will work. It’s refreshing to see another director and another cast demonstrate it’s greatness again.
What hovers over any production is the Old Vic version in 2014 (LINKED HERE) with Richard Armitage as a highly charismatic John Proctor. That also got five stars all round, and both of us thought this one just failed to match it by a whisker. On the other hand, they’ve also clipped thirty five minutes out of it. This was two hours 55 minutes including the interval. The Old Vic one was three and a half hours including the interval. The theatre was full for the Saturday afternoon matinee, but it did not get the standing ovation that Blues For An Alabama Sky received the night before.
We argued the rating but there’s an indefinable extra snap or sparkle to a five star production, and while this ticked all the tangible boxes, that extra snap or sparkle wasn’t quite there.
****
WHAT THE CRITICS SAID
The paragraph I wish I’d written:
As such, the second half of Turner’s production is great for the reasons most great productions of ‘The Crucible’ are great: the exquisite tension in Miller’s writing, the sense that the witch hunters have lost control of the situation and are desperately searching for an off-ramp and the now-imprisoned Proctor’s agonised decision over whether to lie that he was in league with the Devil and live or to die with his name unblemished. It’s a bit like one of those remastered editions of classic albums: a little crisper, a little deeper, you can hear a few new sounds, but ultimately it’s great for the reasons it’s always been great.
Andrzej Lukowski, Time Out, 29 September 2022
five stars
Quentin Letts, Sunday Times *****
Domenic Cavendish, Daily Telegraph *****
Patrick Marmion, Daily Mail *****
Marianka Swain, London Theatre *****
Yorkshire Post *****
Jim Keaveney, The Understudy *****
four stars
Fiona Mountford, iNews ****
Alice Saville, The Independent ****
Andrzej Lukowski, Time Out ****
Theo Bosanquet, What’s On Stage ****
The Stage ****
Jonathan Marshall, The Upcoming ****
three stars
Arifa Akbar, Guardian ***
Susannah Clapp, The Observer ***
Neil Norman, Daily Express ***
LINKS ON THIS BLOG
ARTHUR MILLER
The Crucible by Arthur Miller, Old Vic 2014
plus:
The Price, Theatre Royal Bath 2018
All My Sons by Arthur Miller, Talawa Theatre at Salisbury Playhouse
A View From The Bridge by Arthur Miller, Young Vic
Death of A Salesman, by Arthur Miller, RSC 2015
LYNDSEY TURNER
Hamlet, The Barbican 2015 (with Benedict Cumberbatch)
BRENDAN COWELL
Yerma by Simon Stone, after Lorca, Young Vic 2017
Life of Galileo, Brecht, Young Vic, 2017
KARL JOHNSON
Endgame, The Old Vic 2020
Hamlet, Benedict Cumberbatch, The Barbican (2015) ghost, gravedigger
Peterloo (film)
NICK FLETCHER
The Deep Blue Sea, National 2016, streamed 2020
For Services Rendered, Somerset Maugham, Chichester Minerva
FISAYO AKINADE
Romeo & Juliet, National Theatre film, 2021
COLIN HAIGH
The Seagull, Headlong / Nuffield 2013
EILEEN WALSH
Absolute Hell by Rodney Ackland, National Theatre 2018
Peter Viney's Blog 
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