On Monday's (the "dark" night for many shows) Stage Door, we talk theater ...and often its film connections.
Arthur Miller's classic allegory about the Salem witch trials The Crucible is back on Broadway for a limited engagement currently scheduled to run through July. Expect Tony nominations as it's a gripping night of theater with high profile actors like Saoirse Ronan as the vengeful aggressive Abigail, fresh off her Oscar nomination, and acclaimed Brits Ben Whishaw and Sophie Okonedo as the doomed Proctors.
The Crucible has only been adapted to cinema twice, once in French in 1957 and most famously in English in 1996 with Winona Ryder, Daniel Day Lewis and Joan Allen (Oscar-Nominated) in the principle roles. That film was no classic so it's easy for the current production to obliterate it in the mind's eye. But for Joan Allen's utterly brilliant rendering of Goody Proctor. [More...]
Joan Allen's stoic pain and makeup free introversion proves impossible to top without the benefit of closeups. It's unfair to compare performances directly across two mediums, but Goody's final "I counted myself so plain" confession never reaches Allen's obliterating sadness though Sophie Okonedo is a fine actress. Saoirse Ronan has no such high bar to vault over; her intensity and anger is far more visceral and believable than Winona Ryder's effortful take on Abigal but the character remains the play's weakness, altogether inhuman and free of an actual arc. Ben Whishaw takes MVP honors easily with a heartbreaking mix of guilt, rage, and distinct mapping of his relationships to both Abigail and Elizabeth. His measured calm thinking, so appealing, is an ill fit for an age of raving madness (it's like dropping Obama into a whole town full of Trumps if you'll pardon the political aside.)
The best plays, and The Crucible is one of them, never age. The spiralling madness, which has usually been interpreted as Miller's response to the McCarthy era witch-hunts in 1950s Hollywood, is unfortunately still full of universal truth. Its easy to project much of our current era's dumb down scapegoat-friendly politics and even social media battles onto it, what with the power of mob mentality, the prizing of feelings over facts, and the instant condemnation and/or demands of absolute fidelity rather than discourse and learning to whatever is the current "right" way to speak to any hot topic.
Hysteria is an artistic challenge for the stage, with hundreds of audience members snugly smooshed into expensive seats with playbills watching a polished production and expensive actors work their craft. The Crucible's saving grace in this regard is that its horror is so intellectual so you don't actually have to feel scared in your seat for the play to triumph. (Though I couldn't help but wonder what a rawer outdoor production or more intimate or even interactive 'you-are-there' off broadway staging might feel like?).
The new production's best move is to amp up its contemporary resonance and thematic universality via modern costumes and a chilly minimalist set. The single set, which stands it at various times for homes, courtrooms, and jails but never looks like anything so much as a school with that ever present giant chalkboard --filled with what looks like decades of gibberish -- across the back wall and its teenage horde of accusers dressed in schoolgirl attire. The Crucible remains an inevitable and cautionary descent into madness. Oops, they did it again.
UPDATE: The Crucible has been nominated for 4 Tony Awards including "Best Revival of a Play"