Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible, was based on the Salem Witchcraft Trials of 1692 and shows how a small community can be torn apart by escalating lies and hysteria borne out of greed and envy, against a background of the harsh and unforgiving Puritan religion. At the time he wrote it in 1953 it was so say a parable to McCarthyism and the witch hunts against Communism in the American Government but the play’s real power is in its unrolling of the sorry tale of poor and ordinary people caught up against their will in black mischief they don’t understand.

At the opening, the set is dark and dramatic, the stage dominated by a large wooden cross. In the woods Tituba, the Reverend Parris’s Barbadian slave, comes to dance and beat out the warm rhythms of her homeland, encouraging the village girls to dance, and they in turn encourage her to conjure spirits of the dead. Dancing is strictly against the teachings of the church and when they are surprised by the Reverend Parris, his daughter Betty, who is among them faints and seems not to recover, thereby leading her father to believe she is possessed.

Reverend John Hale is brought from Beverley to examine Betty as he is a recognised expert in the occult, and he questions Abigail, Parris’s niece who was also dancing in the woods. Abigail is a conniving and sly girl, who has had an affair with John Proctor, a farmer for whom she worked but was put out of the house by his wife when she uncovered the affair. Abigail seeks to save her own skin and accuse all around her, so begins with Tituba, saying she is a witch, and Tituba, in turn terrified for her own life accuses the other wives.

There are some fine performances amongst the women, Eleanor Yates as the malicious and self-serving Abigail who refuses to believe that John Proctor prefers his wife to her, Emily Glenister as Mary Warren, John Proctor’s lazy but seemingly good natured servant who in the end is his downfall rather than his saviour, and Alexandra Sorenson as the prudent and highly respected wife, Sarah Nurse, whose piety and good standing in the community nevertheless cannot save her.

The most polished performance of the night goes to Jack Bannell as John Proctor, the brawny and muscular farmer, around whom most of the play revolves, giving the character a raw physical presence and hardy resilience to his eventual fate. The Crucible is a strong and serious piece and BOVTS are more than equal to the challenge in this production.


Jacquie Vowles