Theater Review - Witchy woman

Shakespeare Tavern fills a dark Crucible

Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible as an answer to McCarthyism in 1953, but the play’s political implications remain forever fresh. Miller’s dramatization of the Salem witch trials never fails to prompt you to find parallels in the headlines, like the way a courtroom lie about adultery echoes Bill Clinton’s “perjury trap” during the Lewinsky affair.

A lengthy play with grim themes, The Crucible is nonetheless a juicy piece of stagecraft, and the Shakespeare Tavern makes the most of the show’s forced confessions, illicit rendezvous, apocalyptic speeches and witchery-tests worthy of The Exorcist. Trouble begins when a group of young women, like modern-day Goth girls, are caught cavorting in the woods and accuse innocent citizens of consorting with the devil to deflect suspicion on themselves. As the girls’ ringleader Abigail Williams, Elizabeth D. Wells can come across as too brazenly modern but is fittingly charismatic.

The Crucible is an angry, unsubtle play, and the Tavern renders it mostly in shades of black and white. Salem’s scapegoating and authoritarianism is all too believable, but the more ambiguous characters prove most compelling, like Christopher Paul’s pious but increasingly uncertain the Rev. Hale and Hugh Adams’ sensible John Proctor, a family man guilt-ridden over his tryst with Abigail. Adams’ anguish fleshes out Proctor’s conflicts with personal and social evils, and he has a wrenching final scene opposite Jennifer Akin, who movingly plays Proctor’s wife.

With a cast of 20, the blocking can be a bit static, as if to accommodate so many people on the stage. The Crucible’s Salem setting nicely fits the playhouse’s decor of deep brown wood, although the lively and engrossing production may not be the show for Tavern regulars just seeking food, folks and fun.

The Crucible plays through March 31 at the New American Shakespeare Tavern, 499 Peachtree St. Fri.-Sat. at 7:30 p.m., Sun. at 6:30 p.m. $19.50-$24.50. 404-874-5299.??