“The Crucible”

Susan Granger’s review of “The Crucible” (Walter Kerr Theatre – April, 2016)

Iconoclastic Belgian director Ivo van Hove’s mannered deconstruction of Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible” revives the notorious 17th century Salem witch trials, stripping the concept down to its timelessly scary essence. Earlier this season, 35 year-old van Hove did a similar avant-garde revival of Miller’s tragic “A View from the Bridge.”

Set in a big country classroom, “The Crucible” revolves around the arrogant manipulators and the ignorance of the manipulated, as a group of pious teenagers accuse puritanical townspeople of witchcraft.

They’re headed by willful Abigail (Saoirse Ronan), a servant girl, who is determined to wreak revenge against her adulterous, guilt-riddled lover, John Proctor (Ben Whishaw), and his wife, Elizabeth Proctor (Sophie Okonedo).

While the schoolgirls are dressed in their proper uniforms on Jan Versweyveld’s utilitarian set, everyone else is in drab, rough-hewn garb, courtesy of costumer Wojciech Dziedzic.

Making her Broadway debut, blonde Saoirse Ronan oozes malevolent intensity, more reminiscent of the mean girl in “Heathers” than the meek, dark-haired Irish lass in “Brooklyn.”

Also making his Broadway debut, British Ben Whishaw exudes surprising vulnerability, albeit hidden under a massive, unruly beard that makes him unrecognizable as the gadget-master Q, sparring with Daniel Craig’s James Bond in “Spectre” and “Skyfall.”

Despite superb performances from the entire ensemble, Ivo van Hove’s supernatural staging of this allegorical drama is uneven and bewildering, particularly when a young girl levitates off her bed, a blast of wind topples the classroom, a wolf is on the prowl and mysterious animation appears as writing on the blackboard – accompanied by Philip Glass’s rhythmically percussive music.

Back in 1953, when “The Crucible” was first staged, it was Arthur Miller’s philosophical denunciation of the intolerance and mass hysteria caused by Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee’s hunt for Communists. With much less specificity in 2016, this rendition is less effective, although it could certainly be loosely re-interpreted during this chaotic Presidential election year.

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