The venue provides a connection to this timeless piece
Sam Wanamaker, thanks to whose vision of a theatre in the way Shakespeare and his contemporaries would have had way back when, left America in the 1950s at the height of the McCarthy “Red Scare” era, when the House Un-American Activities Committee was bent on investigating alleged communist and socialist allegiances amongst its citizens. It was with these trials in mind that Arthur Miller penned The Crucible, producing a fascinating study of life and humanity not immediately contemporary, but in the year 1692, in the town of Salem, Massachusetts. Paranoia and religious fervour led to witch trials that see many hanged and more imprisoned. Four years after The Crucible was first staged on Broadway in 1953, Miller himself was found guilty of contempt of congress (a conviction later overturned). The venue now provides a connection to this timeless piece of playwriting: a compelling, classic play, presented in a classic manner, writes Eleanor Thorn.
Crucible: a container in which metals are heated and their behaviour observed: these twenty-one characters inadvertently reveal to us, in a climate of fear-driven mass hysteria, how easy it is for a society to fall into terrible mismanagement of justice and abuse of control. Fear rules, falsehood and pretence have the power to wreak havoc.
Barbadian slave Tituba (Sarah Merrifield) and Rev. Parris’ orphaned teenage niece Abigail (Hannah Saxby) and other girls all easily influenced, are spied frolicking in the forest and accused of sorcery by uncle Rev. Parris(Steve Furst), whose daughter is languishing as if ill or in convulsions. To absolve themselves, and in Abigail’s case, to regain the attention of family man John Proctor (Gavin Drea), they frenziedly accuse others of witchery, which raises them and others into positions of influence and power. ‘Not they’ but so many are the ones guilty of heresy, Devil-worship, baby-sickness and death (bickering and denouncing of neighbours turns serious when hanging is the punishment).
Rev. Parris and Rev. Hale (Jo Stone-Fewings) fear their ‘ministry is at stake’, accuse Jon Proctor of sin for not baptising a child, not attending church and not knowing all the Commandments. John Proctor (and later Rev Hale) sees through all the madness and knows the girls’ convulsions to be pure pretence, theatre (within this theatre), but has to confess his adultery in an attempt to convince the court. The love demonstrated between him and his wife Elizabeth (Phoebe Pryce) is a strong and touching moment. Proctor’s moral courage makes him the hero, and his and Abigail’s are the strongest performances.
An all-female ensemble, barely visible in the gallery, provides plenty of brass and percussive rhythm to good dramatic effect. Scenography is stripped down so we focus on the all-important script.
Shakespeare’s Globe, Bankside, SE1 until 12th July. Admission: £5 – £80.
Booking and full details: https://www.shakespearesglobe.com/
