It is a dramatized and partially fictionalized story of the Salem witch trials that took place in the Province of Massachusetts Bay during 1692 and 1693. Miller wrote the play as an allegory of McCarthyism, when the U.S. government blacklisted accused communists.
Starring Ben Whishaw as John Proctor, Tony winner Sophie Okonedo as his wife Elizabeth Proctor, Saoirse Ronan as Abigail Williams, and Ciaran Hinds as Deputy-Governor Danforth.
The production will be directed by Ivo van Hove, and will have scenic and lighting design by longtime van Hove collaborator Jan Versweyveld, costume design by Wojciech Dziedzic, and an original score by Philip Glass. Additional casting and design team will be announced at a later date.
At a time when smearing a neighbor or movie star or rival presidential candidate can be as easy as hitting 'send,' it's especially troubling to watch riled-up teenagers and self-centered adults point such destructive fingers with impunity...Perhaps because Crucible invokes the supernatural, the staging seems less mannered than van Hove's take on Miller's A View From the Bridge last fall -- but not much...the excellent actors help ensure that Miller's dialogue is never overshadowed...Whishaw's beautifully shaded tenderness and fury also contrasts with the repressed desperation Ronan brings to her role. Alternately cool and rash, her Abigail is more wounded child than calculating homewrecker.
For the sixth time on Broadway, it's the season of the witch. Arthur Miller's play The Crucible, his raw if hyperbolic reenactment of the deadly Salem Witch Trials, struck a nerve when it first premiered in 1953 as a scorching condemnation of the House Un-American Activities Committee, then in the process of uprooting communists via innuendo, scare-mongering, and intimidation. The play's easy-to-understand themes of mob mentality and mass hysteria have made it Miller's most produced work (especially in high schools and colleges), yet in all honesty, the piece is somewhat flat when considered outside the allegory for McCarthyism. As a theatrical experience in 2016, The Crucible needs freshening up.
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