The reason the David Laws story has intrigued me a little more than usual is probably down to seeing THE CRUCIBLE at the Regents Park Open Air Theatre last week - luckily when it was sunny - with it's underlying theme of "To thine own self be true".

The evening was a first for a couple of reasons as I had never seen a drama at Regents Park before, only Shakespeare comedies and musical revivals. I had also only ever seen the play in a 1980 BBC production - a memorable 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.

It's a tricky play to pull off successfully with it's almost three hours of claustrophobic tension, the production needs to hold you in a vice grip which is equally difficult to do in a venue which has so many possible distractions. Arthur Miller never envisioned having to pitch his soberly savage work of the evil that men - and teenage girls - do against Mr. Whippy vans and speeding emergency vehicles. But while not a total success I think the production worked on most levels.The play of course is the thing. Arthur Miller wrote it in 1953 as a response to the anti-communist atmosphere that was cloaking America, first with the McCarthy trials in the early part of that decade and 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 should 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.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 she 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 worked as their servant but who was thrown out when Elizabeth found out about their affair.
Slowly we watch a small community lose it's collective mind, where to question the madness means that you yourself are a suspect and every moment of possible salvation evaporates as their world spins even more off into a place where every denial is an obvious admission of guilt and recriminations can hide grudges and petty dislikes.

Jon Bausor's bare stage is shaped like a New England house so the horizontal doors and windows serve as trapdoors for the cast or props to pop out of is quite effective as it suggests the secrets the town hides and Paul Keogan's subtle lighting cues matched the fading light perfectly.Timothy Sheader's direction was steady and sure but I found the idea of having the girl accusers sitting around the stage who reacted as one to certain things said on the stage to be a bit of a misfire - also there is a bizarre idea to have them moved in a rigid choreographed movement during the scene changes and during the scenes where the girls have hysterical attacks of alleged possession, they came across as Puritan MTV dance routines rather than as violent eruptions of scary hysteria. It was during these scenes when the girls are gripped with this collective hysteria that the production's lack of claustrophobia was most noticeable.

The cast are uniformly fine apart from the central performance by Patrick O'Kane.

As usual he turned in a performance of unnecessary showy intensity - I once read a great slighting review of a Christopher Walken performance that said he acted with all the concentrated intensity of a drag queen who had his wig pulled off. Now I think of that every time I see O'Kane onstage - his final scene which should be Proctor's catharsis was so all over the place due to his over-emoting.

Luckily the rest of the cast were all fine and indeed was a cast worthy of any of the best stages at the NT or west end - Christopher Fulford was fine as Reverend Parris who uses the hysteria of the girls to gain a place in the important male power structure of Salem, Alexandra Mathie made Ann Putnam an all too-recognizable figure of provincial snobbery and venal prejudice, Philip Cumbus was equally effective as Reverand Hale the only authority figure who eventually realises what is really being perpetrated while the forces of good were well played by Susan Engel and Patrick Godfrey as the tragic real life figures of Rebecca Nurse and Giles Corey.

Emma Cunniffe was very fine as Elizabeth Proctor, 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. It was just a shame her final scene was thrown off-balance by the showboating O'Kane.

Emily Taafe was fine as Abigail Williams, the catalyst for the madness but the performance of Bettrys Jones as Mary Warren was a marvel. She made Mary stand out from the other girls with a sly wit but also by suggesting not only the loneliness of an orphan in a society ruled by the family but also her defiance at facing her co-accusers in court and attempting to clear the name of her employers. Her terror was palpable when she in turn is accused by them and her final capitulation was heartbreaking.

However the performance of the evening was from Oliver Ford Davies, in towering form 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. It was a truly 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 the flaws mentioned, it has stayed with me and has now made me keen to see the play again.