The Crucible, 13/06/2017
Arthur Miller : The Crucible
Directed by Douglas Rintoul
Queen's Theatre, Hornchurch
Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg
That Miller's The Crucible remains as relevant today, in our tainted 'post-truth' world as it was in 1953 at the height of the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings is pretty self-evident, and doesn't require much to make it clear to an audience. 'Truth' is clearly only ever what the questioners want to hear, and that is not necessarily - and in this case not at all - what actually occurred. Douglas Rintoul's spare, neat production presented the play crisply and cogently for the most part, with a fairly neutral setting, and costumes circa 1900. He makes no attempt to bludgeon us with the parallels, which is a good thing, because the play really doesn't need any extraneous drama shovelled on top of it.
It took a little while to get warmed up. I felt much of Act 1 was a bit stilted, starting with Cornelius Clarke's Reverend Parris, and there wasn't much chemistry between Eoin Slattery and Lucy Keirl, as John Proctor and Abigail Williams. Keirl in general verged a bit on the Lady Macbeth, rather than a self-absorbed teenager, but Augustina Seymour compensated nicely with her shrinking Mary Warren. Again, I felt Victoria Yeates was a bit sassy as Elizabeth - a woman who's so convinced of her own plainness that suspicion embitters her every interaction with her husband wouldn't, I think, come across as that bold so readily. Slattery took a while to really find his marks, but by the end of Act 2, and into Act 3, he was convincingly projecting a character really not dissimilar to Joseph K, until the end, when his dignity finally reasserts itself.
However, the honours went very much to Charlie Condou, as Reverend Hale, whose blind faith both in his religion and in authority is so violently shattered, and an absolutely scene-stealing performance from Jonathan Tafler as Judge Danforth. On paper, he comes across as a blinkered bigot of the worst order; with a performance of this calibre, what you get is the absolute sincerity of the man, that he truly believes in everything he says, every action he takes, and that's remarkably difficult, because extremist bigots are also usually first-class hypocrites. This is where we get the reminder of that other parallel that's hard to actually spell out on stage; in 1692, these colonists were immigrant refugees, fleeing from religious persecution, and yet, like almost all other large groups of refugees, from all times and places, they have brought with them a toxic baggage mostly constituted of the very problems from which they were ostensibly fleeing in the first place. The religious persecution from which the Salemites were fleeing, they reproduced in their new home, without - at least at first - a moment's consideration for the awful irony. Tafler's Danforth fairly blazed with conviction, and he was a truly immovable force.
There was a quote from Miller's autobiography, Timebends, in the program :-
[Next : 14th June]
Directed by Douglas Rintoul
Queen's Theatre, Hornchurch
Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg
That Miller's The Crucible remains as relevant today, in our tainted 'post-truth' world as it was in 1953 at the height of the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings is pretty self-evident, and doesn't require much to make it clear to an audience. 'Truth' is clearly only ever what the questioners want to hear, and that is not necessarily - and in this case not at all - what actually occurred. Douglas Rintoul's spare, neat production presented the play crisply and cogently for the most part, with a fairly neutral setting, and costumes circa 1900. He makes no attempt to bludgeon us with the parallels, which is a good thing, because the play really doesn't need any extraneous drama shovelled on top of it.
It took a little while to get warmed up. I felt much of Act 1 was a bit stilted, starting with Cornelius Clarke's Reverend Parris, and there wasn't much chemistry between Eoin Slattery and Lucy Keirl, as John Proctor and Abigail Williams. Keirl in general verged a bit on the Lady Macbeth, rather than a self-absorbed teenager, but Augustina Seymour compensated nicely with her shrinking Mary Warren. Again, I felt Victoria Yeates was a bit sassy as Elizabeth - a woman who's so convinced of her own plainness that suspicion embitters her every interaction with her husband wouldn't, I think, come across as that bold so readily. Slattery took a while to really find his marks, but by the end of Act 2, and into Act 3, he was convincingly projecting a character really not dissimilar to Joseph K, until the end, when his dignity finally reasserts itself.
However, the honours went very much to Charlie Condou, as Reverend Hale, whose blind faith both in his religion and in authority is so violently shattered, and an absolutely scene-stealing performance from Jonathan Tafler as Judge Danforth. On paper, he comes across as a blinkered bigot of the worst order; with a performance of this calibre, what you get is the absolute sincerity of the man, that he truly believes in everything he says, every action he takes, and that's remarkably difficult, because extremist bigots are also usually first-class hypocrites. This is where we get the reminder of that other parallel that's hard to actually spell out on stage; in 1692, these colonists were immigrant refugees, fleeing from religious persecution, and yet, like almost all other large groups of refugees, from all times and places, they have brought with them a toxic baggage mostly constituted of the very problems from which they were ostensibly fleeing in the first place. The religious persecution from which the Salemites were fleeing, they reproduced in their new home, without - at least at first - a moment's consideration for the awful irony. Tafler's Danforth fairly blazed with conviction, and he was a truly immovable force.
There was a quote from Miller's autobiography, Timebends, in the program :-
I can almost tell what the political situation in a country is when [The Crucible] is suddenly a hit there - it is either a warning of tyranny on the way, or a reminder of tyranny just past.I found that a chilling thought with which to go home tonight.
[Next : 14th June]