Stage Review - The Crucible
Monday 14th until Saturday 26th June 2010 @ Bristol Old Vic, Bristol
Arthur Miller’s The Crucible holds a lingering echo over the theatrical universe. Not only is it staged and studied through out the world but also it is renowned among critics as one of Miller’s finest works. With this in mind, it is always a challenge to tackle such a text and bring with it some kind of originality to set your piece apart from the 5000 or more versions of the “I’ve done an Arthur Miller play” back catalogue.
Set in 1962 during the Salem Witchcraft Trials, the play deals with themes of guilt, blame, sin, conscience and personal identity. Do you tell the truth and deny you are a witch and then face death or do you lie, sign your name away and keep your life? In this production we witness these characters battle against spiritual fulfillment and material achievement and the internal motives of hypocrisy which drive it. Using history as a double entendre to explore McCarthyism, Miller successfully creates a story with yet another tragic victory.
The aspiring students of the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School have a concrete mixer full of excellence and this production flies to become one of their finest yet. While they stay modestly true to the text, they use the space and relationships to engage the audience and though it is three and a half hours long, each interaction and its believable honesty will have you and time parting ways. Who cares what time it is? This play is amazing!
The set design is simple yet superb. Its basic structure leads to enjoyably slick scene changes and the metaphoric interpretations derived from the set circle how the Salem community is feeling. The wooden planks jutting into the space is threatening and suggests an atmosphere one might find at the hangman’s noose. Likewise, the costumes are aesthetically pleasing and individual to each character pairing, apart from Abigail Williams and the girls who look like a hoard of sheepish banshees as they are identically dressed. This hints at the fickleness of gangs and highlights their naivety and willingness to follow the leader (Abigail), something John Proctor rejects. This I think is one of the most important concepts to dramatise, as John Proctor’s death at the close of the play is a victory for spiritual fulfillment and individualism. Jack Bannell (John Proctor) has a tremendous stage presence and, as they say, he’s not just a pretty face. His closing speech had a tragic intensity which is worthy of the West End.
Despite the language, which is sometimes unaccommodating for a modern audience, the Bristol Old Vic team successfully portrays a dramatic masterpiece which is both educating and entertaining.
Kayleigh Cassidy
Copyright © 2008
June 18th, 2010 at 4:09 pm
My main reservation was about the production itself. It was played on a very large stage, which now has a huge thrust in front of the proscenium. This sense of space was accentuated by the set which was open with back and side cycloramas giving a vast expanse of sky which would have been wonderful for “Oklahoma” but was quite inappropriate to the intimacy and claustrophobic intensity of Salem. To make this worse, most of the play was set upstage behind the proscenium which made it remote, never really involving the audience in the horrors unfolding in that small, close community. We should have felt part of that community and been threatened by what was happening. Instead we were detached observers. That sense of distance would have been fine for Brecht but not for Miller. I would prefer to have seen a small set using only one-third of the stage, all of it in front of the proscenium. And I would have used the auditorium a lot more, with girls on all the audience levels around the house. In Gregory Doran’s production of “Macbeth” with Antony Sher at The Swan we were inside the castle on the morning Duncan’s body was discovered. The soldiers encircled us and we were totally involved, implicated in what was going on. I wanted the audience to feel surrounded, trapped inside that Salem community – implicated and complicit. This production let us off the hook.