Review: The Crucible by Mary Moody Northen Theatre
by Michael Meigs
One measure of the power of Arthur Miller's drama about the Salem witch trials of 1692 is the startling transformation of familiar actors. Tiny Sophia Franzella, now a junior at St. Edward's, has charmed audiences with her wildly comic and mischievous personae in The Imaginary Invalid, Urinetown and A Year with Frog and Toad. Here, as the malicious and vindictive accuser Abigail Williams, Franzella is smooth faced duplicity, a murderous woman-child driven by spite and lust. Hers is a finely understated performance, one that makes her all the more hair-raising because of her almost silent conviction and the restraint of her expression of lust for her former employer John Proctor.
David Stahl, an Equity regular at Austin Playhouse, has acquitted himself of a wide range of characters in Austin theatre but those which remain most vivid in memory, for better or worse, are clowns -- the unnamed all-purpose player in The 39 Steps, the hypochondriac in Laughter on the 23rd Floor, the old actor Henry in The Fantasticks, and Sagot, the prancing rouge-cheeked art dealer in Picasso at the Lapin Agile. Director Michelle Polgar recruited Stahl for the role of Deputy Governor Danforth, the chief inquisitor who entirely dominates the second half of The Crucible. Stahl is nothing less than terrifying, with his baleful stare, self certainty and the immense self regard of a small man in a position that surpasses his capacities.
Arthur Miller studied the historical records of the Salem witch trials, but he wrote this 1953 piece principally as an indictment of the obsessive Communist hunting led by Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee (a body that three years later convicted Miller of contempt of Congress for his refusal to furnish names during a hearing). The witch hunt metaphor stuck like pitch to the investigators and did a great deal to turn public sentiment against them.
Ironically, the meaning of the play's title remains obscure for many -- so much so that the student calling from the Mary Moody Northen Theatre box office was asking whether I wanted to make an early reservation for "the curcible." A crucible is a bowl or other recipient capable of withstanding high temperatures. Miller's title is drawn from the technology of smelting -- melting and then shaping ingots from white-hot metal. It's an inexact metaphor for the content of the play, for the hysterical and then judicial processes described in the work are not transformational but, rather, purely destructive.
Even so, the Mary Moody Theatre's 'theatre in the square' configuration is remarkably well suited to The Crucible's mood and message, for the spectator is always aware of other observers populating the ranks of seats ascending into darkness on all four sides of the playing area. Christopher McCollum's concept of scene design establishes it as a place of witness, of judgment and of memory.
Director Polgar neatly evokes the strongly implied link between 1692 Salem and the present day as the audience is filing in by positioning actor Johnny Joe Trillayes with a pile of books at one of the long wooden tables in that stark space. As Miller did, the character is researching the events in Salem. Behind the noise of arriving audience members we hear faint echoes of the books' content -- names and dates spoken over the chilly, slow, dying musical tones from Brian Eno's album Music for Airports. At start time the house lights go down, leaving as principal illumination the overhead metal lamps bolted into heavy cross pieces. They serve perfectly well for a library space, but they are also appropriate for a prison, a courtroom or some other similarly soulless enclosure. Tittering bands of girls rustle past along the edge of the playing space; disconcerted, the researcher gathers his materials and departs.
Equally stark, strong and simple is Polgar's imagining of the scene opening the second act when a simple manipulation of furniture evokes the finality of judicial executions.
Hysteria, investigation and the terrible denuding of private lives are the essence of this play. A self-righteous and little respected preacher surprises a gaggle of young girls dancing in the woods at night. That behavior of theirs is in itself a sin, and it's made worse by the fact that Rev. Samuel Parrish (Tyler Mount) glimpsed one of them naked. Panicked, one girl feigns a seizure and others accuse a servant of bewitching them. The hysteria builds. Within the wider story of the adamant efforts of the authorities of the church-dominated colony to establish the existence of witches there is another, more intimate: the injured marriage of John Proctor and his wife Elizabeth (David M. Long and Robin Grace Thompson, both invited Actors Equity artists). Proctor committed adultery months earlier with Abigail Williams, their serving girl. He confessed to his wife, who put Abby out on the road. Abby is now ring leader of the coven of false innocents marking townspeople for the noose, and it's only a matter of time before she targets Elizabeth Proctor.
Tying these stories together is the Reverend John Hale, the learned young divine of Harvard College called in to investigate the catalepsis of the niece of self-righteous Rev. Parrish. Johnny Joe Trillayes transforms from library researcher to erudite demonologist in earnest search first of witches and the devil, then later in search of truth. Theological certainties become certainties damning before the law, and truth becomes ever more elusive. Trillayes is assured and convincing in his portrayal of a learned man forced to question his own beliefs.
Fully physically mature Equity actors occupy the key roles in The Crucible, helping to establish the rhythm, tension and impact. Among the student actors in this cast, Trillayes and Franzella rise to the same level. These core performances and Polgar's direction establish this production as a 'must-see' for the current theatre season in Austin.
Review by Jillian Owens for the Austin Chronicle, February 23
EXTRA
Hits as of 2015 03 01: 1560
The Crucible
by Arthur Miller
Mary Moody Northen Theatre
