Review: THE GOOD JOHN PROCTOR, Jermyn Street Theatre

Arthur Miller’s The Crucible is easily still one of the most relevant plays in modern history. A story of mass hysteria and the dangers of extremism, it fictionalises the Salem witch trials with an eye to the abuse of power. American actress and playwright Talene Monahon explores the events that led up to Miller’s dramatisation, following the real stories of the young girls who were tried for witchcraft.

Betty Parris and Abigail Williams’ lives are ruled by suspicion and spiritual insulation, where even playing is considered a sin. Everything changes when the latter starts working on John Proctor’s farm. Part of Jermyn Street Theatre’s Footprints Festival, The Good John Proctor bookends The Crucible, taking its themes and viewing them through the lenses of a broken childhood. Regrettably, it’s underwhelming, muddled, and way too long for what it is.

Three quarters of its running time are simply 17th century girly chit-chat with a casual sprinkle of Salem’s ideology, while the last quarter addresses the aftermath of the trials with the few allegedly now older characters tackling the subject head-on. It’s quite an odd play with too many linguistic choices that are probably supposed to be quirky, but fall flat. Words like buttface coexist with the heavy use of more serious terms and adjectives that stick out like a sore thumb.

The result is inconsistent, lacking in cohesiveness and coming off with a rather shallow exploration of its core elements. Anna Ryder’s direction spikes the steady lull of the text with a few moments of active action towards the second half, but is visually unchallenging and fairly plain. The scene changes are punctuated by a swift shift in lighting and those trendy breaths we’ve started seeing often in the past year or so.

Natalie Johnson’s set is minimal, with a few wooden crates and the most uncomfortable-looking bed on a London stage currently. A two-dimensional backdrop envelopes the narrative with the frames of rural buildings standing like skeletons against a midnight blue background: it does the job but doesn’t add much to the atmosphere (or lack thereof) of the show.

Ultimately, it feels like the vision as a whole is restrained by major forces. On one side we have the desire to be cool and different that’s coming from the writing, on the other, the production is held back by its ambiguous objective. We sit and wait for a revelation, but Monahon doesn’t really make any points except that the characters are growing up in a world of obedience and punishment, battling hard to find an inch of independence and freedom. Abigail (Anna Fordham in an eclectic performance) goes from being the main antagonist of Miller’s take to becoming an endearing and troubled kid who was groomed and abused.

Her cousin Betty is an endearing, childish presence as portrayed by Sabrina Wu, suspicious of the wide-eyed and relentlessly weird Mary Warren (Lydia Larson) and cold to Mercy. As the latter, Amber Sylvia Edwards is the main perpetrator of the linguistic quirks of the piece. Foul-mouthed and extremely modern, the reformed malicious gossip calms down for the final scene to admit guilt while a few ghosts from their past watch on.

In theory, it’s great to see a feminist spin added to a classic of the American canon, but The Good John Proctor doesn’t exactly scratch the itch. It relies on its audiences to know its “sequel” well and doesn’t spin a satisfying investigation of the events that led up to it. It’s obscure in its raison d'être and baffling on too many levels.

The Good John Proctor runs at the Jermyn Street Theatre until 27 January.

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