The Crucible

Arthur Miller is one of our leading contrivers of theatrical explosion, and the trial scene of his Crucible blows up with a thoroughly characteristic, thoroughly effective blast. The rest of his account of certain diabolic activities in Massachusetts is uneven but interesting; Mr. Miller's utter, earnest conviction flames forth from every line of it. The performance it receives at the Charles Playhouse is incompletely authoritative (many of the players, for one thing, are badly in need of diction lessons), but still worth a visit.

Mr. Miller is interested here in "the sin of public terror" (his phraseology is a pretty good indication of where he stands on the matter), which was an even more vital issue when The Crucible was written than it is now. He indulges in no hindsight, and loads his play with no over-obvious parallels to contemporary events--though the audience is not discouraged from drawing parallels itself. But his play demonstrates impressively that when a man reasons from certain premises, it is inevitable for him to conclude that all opposition to the government is treason.

Though Mr. Miller has expressed admiration for Bertolt Brecht, he is unwilling to follow him into the openly, almost abstractly, political drama. His play centers on three carefully humanized beings--a triangle, in fact. One would not expect adultery to be vitally involved with a matter so superficially asexual as the Salem witch trials, especially in the works of so high-minded an author. But the fact that his hero John Proctor has in times recently past "sweated like a stallion" after the slut who is now crying "Witch!" at his wife, adds to the play's intensity without detracting from its integrity--so skillful an artist is Mr. Miller.

Proctor is given a somewhat twitchy performance by John Heffernan, who must surely have the best-exercised neck-muscles on the American stage. When Mr. Heffernan finally drops his mannerisms near the end of the play, it becomes clear that they have been largely concealing a good strong piece of acting. Mary Weed, Olympia Dukakis, and Edward Finnegan contribute excellent work in a generally in-and-out cast.

If many of the characters are not as vivid as they might be, it is not entirely the fault of the actors. There is some slight sense that they were a second thought on Mr. Miller's part, as if he regarded them simply as a means to his end of writing about the implications of witch-hunting. He appears to be a Brechtean at heart, but not in manner, and so has neither produced a passionate parable a la Brecht, nor created particularly memorable autonomous characters in the naturalistic tradition.

His most significant failure, however, is linguistic. He appears to be trying for a grander idiom than his customary one, and an occasional line reverberates with more than usual spaciousness. But many of the speeches are merely clumsy, as if the author was aiming for an archaic effect and did not know quite how to achieve it.

The Crucible also suffers from an occasional note of strain and shrillness in the writing, and this is pointed up by Michael Murray's somewhat overwrought direction, which tends too much toward stealthy, wildly disarrayed entrances and impassioned throwings to the ground. The play needs this sort of effect, and would be dull if Mr. Miller had not contrived frequent occasion for it; but Mr. Murray does not know quite when to stop. However, he has handled several of the crises with great skill.

The arena at the Charles Playhouse is set by Robert G. Skinner with a few solid, bare beams, evocative of Puritan living conditions and symbolic of the strong, harsh, undecorated, uneuphemistic outlook of the Puritan soul. To some degree this is Mr. Miller's outlook too, and according to it he has made a sturdy play, admirable in many aspects and intermittently powerful.