Theatre Intelligence
Review: “The Crucible” at Barrington Stage
Now through October 24
Barrington Stage artistic director Julianne Boyd has no fear of plays with dark themes and untrustworthy characters (e.g, her productions of Carousel, Sweeney Todd, A Streetcar Named Desire.) And there is no shortage of blood-chilling fear and moral corruption in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible which chronicles the Salem Witch Trials. Boyd has made this an actors’ production and there barely feels as if there is a separation between the audience and the stage; you forget you are watching theater and begin to feel that you are witnessing real life.
There is an astonishing clarity to the staging: the spare but evocative set (by David M. Barber ) the literally illuminating lighting (by Scott Pinkney) and the characteristic costumes (by Kristina Sneshkoff) are in exactly the right proportion to each other, supporting Miller’s wonderful script and the actors who transport us back to 1692. Every performance seems perfectly calibrated and convincing, especially Rosalind Cramer as Rebecca Nurse/Sarah Good, Jessica Griffin as the duplicitous Abigail Williams, Caroline Mack (an 8th grader at Mt. Everett School in Sheffield) as the bewtiched Betty Parris, Fletcher McTaggart as the truth-seeking Reverend John Hale, Peter Samuel as the self-serving Reverend Parris, and Gordon Stanley as the earnest Giles Correy.
It’s especially enjoyable and unsettling to watch Kim Stauffer and Christopher Innvar (who played husband and wife in Streetcar last summer) play John and Elizabeth Proctor, a couple who cannot be saved by their love for each other. There is great and noble truth in their agony. But for the audience at Barrington Stage, there is only pleasure in seeing one of the great 20th century American plays being given a production that is tenacious, translucent and indelible.
Barrington Stage Company
Pittsfield, MA
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