Reviews

A look at what is happening in the arts by Irish Timesjournalists

The Crucible

Abbey Theatre, Dublin

Early in Arthur Miller's stirring work of 1953, the rugged farmer John Proctor, whose wife has fallen under the dark suspicion of witchcraft, is asked to recite the Ten Commandments.

Played by Declan Conlon as a man of brusque reason, though emotionally and spiritually inattentive, he stumbles through them, last remembering, thou shalt not bear false witness. He has left one out. "Adultery, John," his wife Elizabeth prompts.

That is The Cruciblein a nutshell; a story of social and political hypocrisy in which witness is almost always false while conscience and fidelity have buckled. Then again, Miller's play is never easily contained: if it is now too-readily accepted as an allegory for McCarthyism, that is to overlook the scrupulous historical detail of Miller's Salem, the corrosion of community he depicts so perfectly, and the gender politics that can seem both insightful and infuriatingly imbalanced.

(The ultimate tragedy of The Cruciblecomes down to the flawed integrity of one man; the tragedy of the Salem witch-hunts is a campaign of political violence perpetrated against women.)

Faced with so many texts, subtexts and contexts, what is a new Irish production of an American modern classic/historical drama/ political allegory to do? The answer, to judge from Patrick Mason's coldly impressive staging at the Abbey, is to simply perform it. None of Mason's decisions seem simple though. The provincial stew of Irish accents, the jarring disparity between a monumental, abstract set and historically faithful costumes (both by Conor Murphy), and the blanket illumination of Lucy Carter's lights all seem significant, but it's not clear what is being signified.

When the fractious community clusters in the home of craven pastor Reverend Parris (Peter Hanly), whose niece is temporarily bewitched, the note that rings with clear contemporary resonance is a canker of litigious distrust - everyone is suing everyone. Coupled with religious tyranny and a culture of fear, this leads to a hysterical pursuit of the Devil, an entity who has rarely enjoyed such attention since. The young Abigail (Ruth Negga), fuelled by unquenchable desire for her now-repentant seducer Proctor, leads a coven of teenage girls in omni-directional accusations, slavishly believed by trumped-up officials, until we have a detente: Proctor must sacrifice his good name to discredit Abigail, and, when that fails, must finally choose to save either his life or his soul.

For all its imposing design, Mason's production ultimately wants no obstruction between the audience and the play, trusting his performers to convey its hysteria and its message. The excellent Peter Gowen, as Reverend Hale, spells out the trials' suffocatingly perverse logic: "We cannot look to superstition in this. The Devil is precise." The chilly wit of those words almost never gets a laugh, whereas Cathy Belton, an understated marvel as Elizabeth, will always get a response telling her husband he has "a faulty understanding of young girls". So does Christopher Saul's crusading deputy governor Danforth, and so, one fears, does Miller, who demonises Abigail so utterly it is a wonder Ruth Negga doesn't burst into flames.

The reverence afforded to Miller may make The Crucibleseem airtight, yet you will always see something new in it. Some may decry any perceived meddling with the play; others will always want to see Miller shaken up. If this production seems torn between the purists and iconoclasts, a choice as confining as the witch-hunt ultimatum to either confess or be hanged, that is the still-absorbing conundrum of the play: damned if you do, damned if you don't.