No trainwreck, but middling overall. The play came through pretty strongly, but the staging seemed somehow lacking in a clear vision; set in 17th century Salem, Massachusetts, it was written by Miller as a parable for the communist witch hunts of the 1950s but derives its effect from its more universal depiction of the forces in human nature and society that can generate and drive such situations, and so the choice, as here, to not force any kind of overt 'updating' on it - terrorists, or in the current clime, perhaps migrants and specifically asylum seekers, being the obvious candidates - is an entirely legitimate artistic one, but the difficulty with the production was that it never really seems to reconcile the competing effects that its historical setting and the contemporary times in which it's being put on inevitably produce.
So, for example, the fear of witchcraft, and the way that it drives much of the action and character motivation, takes on a different valence in our modern times, where belief in the devil as an active force in society is, if not wholly gone, then at least far from universal (it's worth noting, this was already the case in the 1950s). What's critical is not that the audience be able to directly empathise with that context, but that its effect - on the characters, on us - ring true, and with this version of The Crucible, in that example and many others, there remained a dissonance, a lack of definition that undermined the clarion clarity of which the play's no doubt capable. In short, while it wasn't boring, nor did it grip.
The set perhaps had something to do with it - black backdrop and earth underfoot at the margins, starkly angular white framing structures and a minimum of other white props, perhaps intended to evoke the Puritan sparseness and focus attention on the characters - but, on balance, I don't think so. The acting was generally fine (Elizabeth Nabben as Abigail stood out - in a nicely local touch, I noticed her on our tram home afterwards - as did Brian Lipson's Judge Danforth (albeit with shoutily Alan Rickman like tones) and Grant Cartwright's Hale) but suffered from those underlying structural difficulties around lack of clear definition and thrust, including in David Wenham's turn as John Proctor. Anyhow, as I said at the outset, this wasn't bad - in fact, I quite enjoyed it - but I felt like it could have been much more.
(w/ Cass, Kai, Al, Steph N and Mehnaz)
So, for example, the fear of witchcraft, and the way that it drives much of the action and character motivation, takes on a different valence in our modern times, where belief in the devil as an active force in society is, if not wholly gone, then at least far from universal (it's worth noting, this was already the case in the 1950s). What's critical is not that the audience be able to directly empathise with that context, but that its effect - on the characters, on us - ring true, and with this version of The Crucible, in that example and many others, there remained a dissonance, a lack of definition that undermined the clarion clarity of which the play's no doubt capable. In short, while it wasn't boring, nor did it grip.
The set perhaps had something to do with it - black backdrop and earth underfoot at the margins, starkly angular white framing structures and a minimum of other white props, perhaps intended to evoke the Puritan sparseness and focus attention on the characters - but, on balance, I don't think so. The acting was generally fine (Elizabeth Nabben as Abigail stood out - in a nicely local touch, I noticed her on our tram home afterwards - as did Brian Lipson's Judge Danforth (albeit with shoutily Alan Rickman like tones) and Grant Cartwright's Hale) but suffered from those underlying structural difficulties around lack of clear definition and thrust, including in David Wenham's turn as John Proctor. Anyhow, as I said at the outset, this wasn't bad - in fact, I quite enjoyed it - but I felt like it could have been much more.
(w/ Cass, Kai, Al, Steph N and Mehnaz)
