Theatre in Review: The Crucible (Walter Kerr Theatre)

	Ben Whishaw, Tavi Gevinson, Jason Butler Harner. Photo: Jan Versweyveld

A great deal has been written over the years about The Crucible, about whether it works as both historical drama and political statement, and if the implied parallel between Puritan Massachusetts and McCarthy-era Washington is really as mordant as it first appears. In its new Broadway revival, the director Ivo van Hove doesn't worry himself about any of this: Instead, he stages The Crucible as a horror film. This becomes clear at the outset, when the curtain rises on a modern classroom filled with young girls facing upstage, singing a song; the image holds only for a few seconds, then the curtain drops. It rises again to reveal the opening scene of the play, with the Reverend Samuel Parris holding his comatose daughter, Betty.

Thus, the production begins on a note of innocence that feels strangely sinister, rather like all those movie trailers one sees in which a sweet young thing -- usually a case of possession -- beams with goodwill before wreaking havoc with a pair of scissors. Van Hove repeats the trick with the show curtain later on: It rises briefly to show a young girl floating in midair -- courtesy of Flying by Foy -- then drops again before opening to reveal the next scene. The second act begins with a wolf (well, really a dog pretending to be one) prowling the stage, surely one of the odder assignments ever given to Broadway animal master William Berloni. Later, when the young ladies of Salem stage a collective freak-out, the squiggles on the upstage chalkboard suddenly take flight like a flock of birds; a smoke-filled wind blows through the windows at stage right, filling the stage with debris; and one of the overhead lighting fixtures short-circuits and breaks loose from the ceiling. A play about psychological and social hysteria suddenly looks the latest sequel to The Exorcist.

So maybe Salem is really in the grip of the devil after all. Or maybe van Hove is once again pursuing his singular vision, which takes the emotions buried in the play's subtext and renders them in physical terms. To my mind, The Crucible is far more effective than van Hove's earlier-in-the-season staging of another Miller play, A View from the Bridge (which, admittedly, was acclaimed by many), largely because it is performed, down to the smallest role, by such a superb cast. However, you sometimes have to squint your eyes in order to find them among all the special effects.

As John Proctor, the good, but morally compromised, man who is forced to make a stand when Abigail, his own serving girl -- and, briefly, his former lover -- becomes the ringleader of the girls claiming to have frolicked with Satan, Ben Whishaw works thoughtfully and well. In the early scenes, he expresses an almost amused skepticism that mere children are allowed to spread their lies, sowing fear in the community; later, when both he and his wife, Elizabeth, fall under suspicion, his mounting fury culminates in a bravura moment when he sweeps all the objects off a table, dismissing the madness of the world with a single gesture. He also brings a heartbreaking tenderness to the climactic scene in which he and Elizabeth, now prisoners, reach out to each other. This is an excellent Broadway debut for this fast-rising actor. Ciarán Hinds is equally good as the prosecutor, Danforth, who credulously accepts the girls' claims and then cannot backtrack in the face of evidence that contradicts them; there's a piercing look of fright in the actor's eye, first expressing Danforth's fear of demonic events and, later, the terror that he may have sent dozens of innocents to the gallows. Anyone who saw Saoirse Ronan's supremely sensitive performance in the film Brooklyn will be startled by the sheer, unvarnished malice of her Abigail, who uses her deception to wreak havoc on anyone who crosses her.

Everywhere you look, there are incisive characterizations. Bill Camp nails the anguish of the Reverend John Hale, who comes to realize, too late, that the girls have fooled the entire community. Tavi Gevinson, much improved since her debut in This is Our Youth, is harrowing as the one girl who, briefly, recants, only to be terrorized into taking it back. Jason Butler Harner's Reverend Parris is a finely honed neurotic who takes a disconcerting pleasure in each new round of accusations. Jenny Jules is an authentically frightened presence as Tituba, the black servant who is blamed for introducing the girls to witchery. That the smaller roles are filled by the likes of Jim Norton, Tina Benko, Thomas Jay Ryan, Brenda Wehle, Teagle F. Bougere, and Erin Wilhelmi will give you an idea of the Tiffany casting involved.

The one weak link in the cast -- and it is a serious one -- is Sophie Okonedo as Elizabeth, John's semi-estranged wife, who urges him to expose Abigail's fraud and thereby causes them both to be arrested. Okonedo, who won a well-deserved Tony for the recent revival of A Raisin in the Sun, brings a surface placidity to the role that seems right, but there's a fundamental lack of tension between her and Whishaw. The marriage of John and Elizabeth is riddled with unspoken anger and suspicion, little of which is felt here. And, when she is taken away, accused of witchcraft, you don't fully feel her terror at losing her freedom and good name. She partners beautifully with Whishaw in the final scene, in which Elizabeth reaches out to her husband in sorrow, seeking forgiveness, but van Hove undercuts them by larding them with grotestque makeup effects -- dressing them in filthy rags, covering their faces with soot, and turning their backs into bloody hamburger, the apparent result of several flailings. It's all too much -- both actors look like they have just emerged from the rubble of the Twin Towers -- and, instead of attending to John and Elizabeth's anguish, you're wondering how long it took to get them into those getups.

Also, van Hove once again indulges his penchant for persistent underscoring, this time with music, by Philip Glass, that calls attention away from the dialogue and even, on occasion, masks it. The climactic scene with John and Elizabeth features an insistent violin solo; this is another movie idea, and a B movie one at that. The production further suffers from overly deliberate pacing. Even with a fair number of cuts to the text, it still comes in at a longish two hours and forty-five minutes.

Jan Versweyveld's classroom set, interestingly, features a metal door with bars that is suggestive of a prison or even a mental ward. (Why the play is taking place in a 21st-century classroom is never clear; presumably, van Hove is trying to stress the timelessness of the materal, but this is a point that hardly needs making, given the play's provenance as a response to the anti-communist blacklist.) Versweyveld's lighting is more problematic, especially his use of softly diffused sidelight. If you're seated near the stage at house left, as I was, you'll see a bank of inordinately bright light coming through frosted windows at stage left; the glare all but erases the actors -- you can forget about seeing their faces at such moments. Wojciech Dziedzic's costumes and Tom Gibbons' sound design are both fine. Tal Yarden's video design -- which is confined to the chalkboard effects mentioned above -- is cleverly executed; whether it is necessary is another matter.

The Crucible isn't Miller's finest play -- a certain sententiousness clings to the dialogue and the plotting is sometimes a little creaky; if Death of a Salesman still feels fresh, The Crucible sometimes seems like a relic of 19th-century melodrama. Yet it persists because it accurately diagnoses a neurosis that continues to afflict the body politic. Van Hove's production sometimes gets at this and sometimes gets lost in a welter of staging ideas. At its best, The Crucible can give off a distinct odor of brimstone; in this production, it seems to emanate from the fog machines hidden in the wings. -- David Barbour