“The Real Witch Hunts”
It’s impossible, while watching Eric Tucker’s magnetically gripping
revival of Arthur Miller’s 1953 modern classic The Crucible, for
Bedlam (i/a/w the Nora), not to shudder at the play’s resonances with the current impeachment mess.
The Crucible, of course, conflates the Salem witchcraft trials of 1692-1693
with the communist-hunting HUAC hearings of the McCarthy era.
As I once wrote regarding a different production (with different actors than those named here), The Crucible examines the mass hysteria stirred up in a Puritan community by the accusations of witchcraft leveled by 17-year-old Abigail Williams (Truett Felt, ferocious) and other girls as a way of avoiding punishment for having been seen at night dancing in the woods. They blame their behavior on the Devil. Allegations of witchcraft are leveled by Abigail at various Salem women, including Elizabeth Proctor (Susannah Millonzi, deeply moving), wife of the independent-minded farmer John Proctor (Ryan Quinn, tragically heroic), Abigail’s employer, whom she seduced and whose wife she’d like to replace.
The townspeople respond in a superstition-fueled frenzy that
brings powerful officials, led by the obdurate Deputy Governor Danforth (Paul
Lazar, ruthlessly demanding), to Salem to seek out the devil worshippers;
torture and the threat of hanging are deployed to force the defendants to name
names. Motivated by personal animosities, including greed, vengeance, and envy,
neighbors turn on neighbors, and reason to unreason. Tragedy ensues when the
morally compromised Proctor performs a sacrificial act that saves his “name,”
leading his equally condemned (and pregnant) wife to say, “He has his goodness
now.”
Certainly, the maelstrom of passions, fears, imaginings, panic,
and superstition is as viscerally present in this unusual, stripped-down, 14-actor
production (13 when I attended) as it was in Ivo
van Hove’s controversial rendering on Broadway, which I admired, in 2016. The
auditorium seats in the old Connelly Theater in Alphabet City have been removed
so that some audience members, seated on the stage, view the performance while facing
the spacious auditorium’s rear. Others, in the auditorium itself,
surround the action in a semicircular row. 
Costumes have been reduced by Charlotte Palmer-Lane to
neutral modern styles, lots of them dark and scruffy, while John McDermott’s
scenery-less set consists of little more than sturdy, old, mismatched, wooden
kitchen chairs and tables, as well as a bed. These are moved about rapidly in cleverly
orchestrated shifts (chairs roll on casters), serving for multiple purposes
(tables, or tables on tables, become platforms, for example), but with all
units (like the “offstage” actors) remaining exposed throughout. With scene
flowing instantly into scene it sometimes takes a moment or two to determine
where we are.
The cast, annoyingly, is listed in the program (handed out after
the show) as an unindividuated ensemble, no one being identified by their roles.
This requires interested theatregoers to determine who’s who on their own. If I
were an actor brave enough to risk hanging by Salem’s court, I’d protest. 
Various actors play more than one role. Given the relative paucity
of visual hints, this can be momentarily confusing. Distinctive performances in
particular roles are given by Caroline Grogan as Mary Warren, the one girl
willing to call Abigail a liar; Shirine Babb as Tituba, the Barbadian slave; Randolph
Curtis Rand as the self-important, narrowminded Rev. Parris; Rajesh Bose as
Giles Corey, who bravely endures death by the piling on of stones (“More
weight,” he demands); Shaun Taylor-Corbett, as the clerk, Cheever, crawling
like a dog on all fours; director Eric Tucker as the conscience-stricken Rev.
Hale; Alan Altschuler as the hardscrabble landowner Thomas Putnam; and John
Terry, playing not only his own roles but stepping in excellently—book in hand—to
play those of the ailing Arash Mokhtar. 
For all his John Doyle-like
minimalism, and his creative use of the simple assortment of battered furniture,
Tucker respects the text. He’s inspired his cast to express their characters’ words,
emotions, and motives with remarkable conviction, building moments of anxiety
with considerable overlapping of dialogue and near-operatic explosions of anger
and fright. This occasionally means a plethora of shouting but it never seems
forced, even when—as in the opening scene at Rev. Parris’s house—the actors
seem to be affecting an exaggeratedly melodramatic manner. This combination of
heightened theatrical style and profoundly invested emotionality grabs you
tightly and never lets go. 
Given the deep connection the actors make with their
characters and the situations, however, Tucker’s penchant for gimmickry can seem
intrusively unnecessary. Does he really need those postmodern microphones (soon
enough discarded)? Or a cowboy-style revolver and holster at the Marshal’s hip?
Or actors lighting their own faces in the dark with flashlights? Or small metal
lamps maneuvered by the actors for spotlight effects? Les Dickert’s piercing
lighting does well enough sticking to conventional means without such nods to clichéd
avant-gardism. 
Bedlam’s The Crucible follows in the wake of other “experimental”
revivals of the play, from the Wooster Group’s version, where it forms one part
of L.S.D.
(. . . Just the High Points . . . ), to the previously mentioned Ivo van
Hove revival. An offbeat version of a three-hour American classic at one of New
York’s less accessible venues may not be high on many holiday season lists. Serious
theatregoers, though, should consider gifting themselves a visit to East Fourth
Street to see this one before it closes.
Connelly Theater
220 E. Fourth St., NYC
Through January 29
