Theater Review: The Crucible at Trinity Rep
Friday, February 11, 2011
How refreshing, how real, and how rewarding, that the best moments in Trinity Rep's revival of Arthur Miller's classic 1956 drama, The Crucible, are the smallest, quietest, and most domestic. Director Brian McEleney's production of this towering play that takes events from 17th-century Salem and imbues them with Miller's experiences with the Communist witch-hunts of the 1950s, has, in the remarkable chemistry of its central characters, made a drama of thought into a tale of humanity. Trinity's Crucible is its most successful, in fact, during these wonderful moments, and reveals a deep and feeling portrait of a marriage.
Puritans behaving badly
That marriage, of course, is that of John and Elizabeth Proctor (Stephen Thorne and Angela Brazil). They're farmers who live outside the Puritan center of Salem in 1692, but it's Wisteria Lane activity that sets all hell breaking loose in town. Abigail Williams (Olivia D'Ambrosio), the teenaged servant to the Proctors, has been bedded by John, and under the suspicions of Elizabeth, has been set to the high road. In other words, she's been booted and is now kicking around Salem with other hormonal teens, who may or may not have been dancing naked in the woods and conjuring with TItuba (Barbara Meek), slave of Reverend Samuel Parris (Bob Berky).
What follows, famously, is the community of Salem - in witness to the apparent possession of the girls - turning on itself in fear and recrimination, climaxing in frenzied courtroom antics despite the domineering intervention of Deputy Governor Danforth (Fred Sullivan, Jr.).
The frenzy
And it does get frenzied, loud, and shrill, when all those Puritans start pointing fingers, whether at heaven or at each other. Unfortunately, this numbs the impact of several major acts of this Crucible. Further, McEleney's notion of having only 11 people play 20 roles has inspired a stagey bit of business at the beginning of each act, where each actor steps forward to the audience and announces, gravely, his or her character/s for that act. It's dour Chorus Line and it doesn't work. Neither do muslin skirts on the two brawny young actors who double as Salem girls, aping girlish antics.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTThe steps
Secondly, a concept setting by Eugene Lee, which looked gorgeous as a model pictured on the cover of Trinity's promotional magazine, fell largely flat. Literally. An enormous black and white photo mural of Providence's City Hall backs the performance, and the play is performed on broad gray steps, with some rustic scaffolding to give verticality to the movement. It's pretty obvious where this is all heading, from the witness borne in the town square to the gallows-like foreshadowing of the scaffolds. It isn't played as a play within a play (thank goodness), but neither does it particularly make sense to see Puritans on the steps where Haven Brothers used to be.
(Especially when you consider that as part of Roger Williams' lively experiment, the colony here forbade the construction of town greens where church and state could intermingle. Salem, yes. Providence, no.)
The Proctors
But what a revelation, after the noisy hysteria of Act I, to open on the Proctors at quiet war with each other. John eats Elizabeth's meal for him as the two quietly, painfully, take up the subject of his betrayal. Brazil and Thorne happen to be married in real life, and perhaps this adds the deep undertones that make their quiet exchanges rich and real. But it is also to credit both actors for their capacity for subtlety and control of volume (and to McEleney for giving these scenes the room to breathe). The scene in Act IV where Elizabeth must choose to lie to protect John's life is one of the tensest, most real moments on stage this year. And it's held in Brazil's palpable desire to see her husband's face as Sulllivan's Danforth commands her to look away.
Oddly, their reserved but deeply felt scenes have more impact than do those with John and his tormentress, Abigail - usually the sexiest and most dangerous moments of The Crucible. D'Ambrosio has a schoolyard fierceness that works with her fellow girls, but her sexuality and drive around Thorne is absent. If we'd read her lines as text on his cellphone, we'd know she was hot and dangerous, but in the flesh, she's tight and wooden. It's a missed opportunity, but again, makes us yearn for Thorne and Brazil to share the stage.
For even though Miller's play, still taut, beautifully written and timeless, is always worth our listening (and witness), for this run, it's not about the big ideas that you should go. You should go to remember how complex the truth is between a man and a woman, and in the hands of nuanced and powerful actors, how much this means no matter what the government says.
The Crucible by Arthur Miller, directed by Brian McEleney, now through March 13, 2011 in the Chace Theater, 201 Washington St, Providence. For reservations, call 351-4242, or go online, here.
Photos: Mark Turek
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