THE CRUCIBLE at the Olivier, National Theatre - Children will listen...

The last time I saw Arthur Miller's THE CRUCIBLE, I was keen to see it again.  12 years later, I have...

I was not too keen when the National's new production was announced as it was directed by Lyndsey Turner who delivered a dreary LIGHT SHINING IN BUCKINGHAMSHIRE a few years ago; I was also dreading what they were going to do with the text - set it in Ukraine or Carnaby Street - the actors holding handheld microphones or texting their lines to each other? 

I need not have worried, Turner delivered a sturdy, in-period production, stripped down to concentrate on Miller's oak-like text, there is hardly any deviation from the grim relentlessness of his narrative.  Apart from the 2010 Regent's Park production I had also only ever seen the play in a 1980 BBC version with a great cast including Eric Porter, Daniel Massey, Denis Quilley and Peter Vaughn - and Nicholas Hytner's 1996 film with Daniel Day Lewis and a chilling Paul Scofield as Danforth.

Arthur Miller wrote it in 1953 as a response to the anti-communist atmosphere that was cloaking America, mainly with the McCarthy trials in the early part of that decade when Miller was himself called to the later House Un-American Activities Commitee where he refused to name names. Mirroring this "scoundrel time" as Lilian Hellman called it, Miller found himself drawn to the 1692 Salem Witch-hunting case when twenty innocent people were executed on the evidence of some of the town's young schoolgirls.

What could be dated polemic, in the hands of Miller, becomes a play which feels as contemporary as the day it was written. Time and again we have seen a situation when what is unreal and unseen is more important that what is real and provable, as long as there is a small group of people whipping up hatred and blame based on a handy believe system, THE CRUCIBLE will be timely - the most obvious recent case being the anti-semitism scam against Jeremy Corbyn and the left-wing Labour members. Miller based his play around the real people in the case with a little dramatic seasoning to give the terrible occurrences a believable basis. 

In the hardline Puritanical community of Salem, as misogynistic as it is pious, the schoolgirls have to think fast when they are caught dancing in the woods at night so their ringleader Abigail Williams declares they were made to commune with the Devil through the spells of a black slave Tituba.

When brutally questioned by her owner and his fellow menfolk Tituba agrees that she was made by the Devil to do his work - as were the people whose names she saw written in The Devil's Book. Soon the girls are caught up in the frenzy of the moment and scream out names of older women and men who they say send their spirits to torment them at night. Abigail seizes her moment for revenge by naming Elizabeth, the wife of farmer John Proctor with whom Abigail had an adulterous liaison when she was their servant but who was thrown out when Elizabeth found out about the affair.

Slowly we watch a small community lose it's collective mind, where to question the madness means that you are a suspect and every moment of possible salvation evaporates as their world spins off into a place where every denial is an obvious admission of guilt and recriminations are fuelled by grudges and petty dislikes.

Es Devlin's bare stone-flagged set with sturdy wooden furniture is very impressive, made even more claustrophobic by walls of pouring, bleak rain obscuring the stage before and during the action. Tim Lutkin's lighting is also kept to the minimum, creating an air of oppression.

The cast are uniformly fine: Australian actor Brendan Cowell makes a sturdy John Proctor, riven with guilt at unwaringly setting the madness in place by rejecting Abigail's advances after the end of their affair although he didn't quite hit the heights at the climax of the play when Proctor realises that, in admitting his guilt, he robs himself of the only thing he can call his own - his name.   

He was well partnered with Eileen Walsh as Elizabeth, a woman whose sense of duty leads her to not only inadvertently condemn her husband in the court's eyes but to make her realise that it had stifled their life together. She perfectly captured a woman whose joy has been lost through childbearing and subsequent illnesses as well as suspicion at her husband's affair.

Nick Fletcher gave us a hissable Reverend Parris who uses the hysteria of the girls to gain a place in the important male power structure of Salem, Zoe Aldrich made Ann Putnam an all too-recognizable figure of provincial snobbery and venal prejudice, Fisayo Akinade was equally effective as Reverand Hale the only authority figure who eventually realises what is really being perpetrated while the doomed forces of good were well played by Tilly Tremaine and Karl Johnson as the tragic real life figures of Rebecca Nurse and Giles Corey.

Erin Doherty was fine as the calculating Abigail Williams, the catalyst for the madness who is always one step ahead of the patriarchy but she was matched by Rachelle Diedericks as Mary Warren; her swift changes from sullen stroppiness to suggesting the loneliness of an orphan in a society ruled by the family to her defiance at facing her co-accusers in court and attempting to clear the name of the Proctors. Her terror was palpable when she in turn is accused by them and her final capitulation was heartbreaking.

Also impressive was Matthew Marsh as Deputy-Governer Danforth. He dominated the trial scene with his flinty determination that the letter of the law be adhered to - even as those letters were being twisted to suit the meaning he gave them: a frightening representation of power which ultimately is what the play is about - the perverting of justice and the truth by those who should be it's custodians.

Although the production had a few timing flaws - I suspect due to it being the first preview - it deserves to be seen.