The Crucible
The Crucible, Wharf 2, Sydney Theatre Company Education Program, May 4-30; www.sydneytheatre.com.au
True confession time: in the closing minutes of this production of The Crucible tears filled my eyes and I was undone. The pain and sorrow I felt were close to overwhelming and the only other time I can recall a similar reaction was in the closing minutes of the movie Billy Budd. After mopping up the streaked mascara and downing a restorative glass of red I felt able to examine my response and try to figure it out.
Director Tanya Goldberg’s production of Arthur Miller’s great play is in the STC’s Education Program and is aimed at the HSC generation. This should not be taken to mean it is in any way second-rate, either in production values or casting, as has been suggested by some who’ve said they’re “not bothering with it”. It would be a huge mistake to overlook one of the best interpretations and best casts in any play – let alone a seminal one – that’s likely to be staged this year.
Anyway, having considered – at length – why this Crucible and that Billy Budd have the power to reduce me to snivelling wreckage, this is what I think and why.
As you probably know, Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible as an (allegorical) response to the witch hunting activities of the HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee) and its witchfinder general Senator Joe McCarthy. McCarthy was convinced that the Reds were not only under post-WW2 beds but also scheming to overthrow the Free World via their infiltrated strongholds in the Arts and Hollywood. Hysteria and suspicion, accusation and betrayal quickly became daily currency in Washington DC and across the country as people succumbed to threats and dobbed in friends and colleagues rather than risk their careers. At the same time, careers and lives were ruined by those who did not give in ¬ or who were given up by peers ¬ to McCarthy’s mob.
History being the endlessly repeating record that it is, Miller was able to go straight to the New England village of Salem, Massachusetts and 1692 for a story to illustrate his thesis “If the current degeneration of discourse continued, as I had every reason to believe it would, we could no longer be a democracy, a system that required a certain basic trust in order to exist.” (From his autobiography Timebends quoted in the play program.) Put another way, Miller wanted to demonstrate the ease with which the veneer of civilisation can be cracked and then broken to reveal the fearful savages just below the surface.
It’s arguable that in Salem at that time religion and superstition were even more closely linked than they are today, although having said that I think it might be nonsense. The “crime” that sets in motion the awful events of The Crucible is dancing: some of the village girls are spotted dancing in the woods. This is taken as evidence of their involvement in witchcraft and anyway, it’s ungodly.
Come forward 414 years to 2007 and to Liberty University (the largest evangelical university in the world, in Lynchburg, Virginia, again according to the program). In its code of student conduct it lists various offences ranging from “entering the space above ceiling tiles – $50 fine”, to “possession or consumption of alcoholic beverages – $500 fine” and includes “attendance at a dance ¬ $25 fine”. It would be funny if it were funny, but it isn’t.
As young girls are wont to do, once one realises she’s in trouble she sets up a shrieking and pointing of her finger at one and all. As blame, hysteria and revenge are contagious, it’s not long before the community descends into terror and chaos. Rumour and tittle-tattle turn toxic as reverends and judges are summoned to rout out the alleged evil.
Abigail Williams (Arianwen Parkes-Lockwood) is the kind of pert girl Michael Gow’s Away refers to as “a snide miss”. She’s pretty, sneaky, conniving and terribly dangerous. The others – Mercy Lewis (Lynette Curran), Betty Parris (Celeste Dodwell) and Mary Warren (Zindzi Okenyo) – are in her thrall and like rabbits trapped in a spotlight. Each inhabits a character discrete from the others and as clear as crystal. They are, in their different ways, as pathetic and frightening as cornered wild animals.
Salem’s resident man of God is the Rev. Parris (Angus King), a sanctimonious, prideful, money-grabbing piece of work if ever there was one. His first reaction, when he thinks young Betty is possessed by the Devil, is not her welfare but his. It’s the one-note tune he plays throughout. His is a performance that gives even the most hypocritical tele-evangelist a bad name.
Caught up in the rolling wave of havoc caused by the girls are the simple Barbados slave Tituba (the second of three terrific characters from Lynette Curran, the other is local midwife Rebecca Nurse), the lemon-lipped village worthy Ann Putnam (Marta Dusseldorp) and her priggish husband Thomas (Sean O’Shea); and the out-of-town farmers Giles Corey (Peter Carroll) and John Proctor (Joe Manning).
The split that quickly opens up between the “sophistication” of Salem and the salt-of-the-earth style of Proctor and Corey is a chasm into which innocence and trust will fall before the evening is out. Corey is a simple man and Proctor is an honest one. They’re fatal traits in this situation.
In previous productions of The Crucible that I’ve seen (including the famous STC version with (the real) John Howard as Proctor) the setting has been Salem 1692 or thereabouts: buckled shoes, starched white mob caps and sober Puritan-style clothing. It’s visually effective and at the time of the play’s New York premiere in 1953, may have been an homage or perhaps an echo of the Shakespearean mode of distancing unpalatable truths: place them safely in the past.
Goldberg and her set and costume designer Simone Romaniuk have taken the bold step of placing the play in the here and now. The set is abstract and minimal (lighting by Verity Hampson). The girls wear hoodies, frocks and skimpy tops; Ann Putnam looks as if she’s about to play bridge in a nice twin set and scarf; the Rev Parris has obviously been watching far too much 3am church TV and is unctuously resplendent in white shoes, white suit and sky blue vicar’s shirt with a peep of white dog collar.
The very superior Judge Danforth (O’Shea again) stalks around with his nose in the air and an elegant dark suit and legal gown, while his accomplice in the trials, the Rev Hale (Nathan Lovejoy), is somewhere between a Vatican diplomat and Anthony Robbins in his sharp dark suit and over-rehearsed piety.
The McCarthy era in the USA ended in calamity for many and cast a pall over the country that lasted years. It reared its ugly face again with George W Bush’s “if you’re not with us you’re against us”. And it continues to morph into something closer to the original Salem witch hunts as a similarly warped, Old Testament-based fundamentalist “Christianity” gains traction among the poor and ignorant.
Which brings us back to Billy Budd and tears. Most often in productions of The Crucible John Proctor’s wife Elizabeth is a chilly thing. Her ramrod morality in the knowledge of Proctor’s dalliance with young Abigail is at the heart of his eventual downfall. As played by Marta Dusseldorp, however, Elizabeth is as flawed as he and he is as human as she.
Elizabeth alone, of all members of her community, is unable to stand in judgement, to condemn him; and she cannot lie. Neither will she tell him to confess a lie to save himself, or to remain steadfast and truthful and condemn himself to death. In the final moments, they face each other, each dressed in orange overalls, he in chains, the Gitmo garb that signals the worst kind of incarceration to a young audience. Her face glows with trust that he will do the right thing by his own lights; that forgiveness and love are all and will triumph in the end.
In Billy Budd the young Terence Stamp, as the innocent condemned sailor boy of the title, has a similar moment. He is going to hang at the behest of the lying, cruel Claggart, a man who is his superior courtesy only of a uniform. Like Elizabeth, Billy glows in the knowledge that his love of life is not greater than his love of what matters most to him: honesty and truth; love and forgiveness.
These are extraordinary, life-affirming moments of revelation that make life worthwhile. I scribbled on the program on the way home last night: “The power of the powerless is their dignity and courage, and their inevitable death.” And that, I figured, is the great tragedy and inspiration of these two characters and their fate.
Arthur Miller said (in Timebends, also in the program) “I went naked to Salem, still unable to accept the most common experience of humanity, the shifts of interests that turned loving husbands and wives into stony enemies, loving parents into indifferent supervisors or even exploiters of their children – – that was the real story of ancient Salem Village, what they called then the breaking of charity with one another.”
We break charity with one another at our peril. Please see this production and take your teenagers.
